BP, as part of their pro membership has a number of attorney review and state/city compliant leases available in their toolkit.

Fully 1031 compliant but also passive. 

You are unlikely to find it makes economic sense to go down the SEC compliant route for a small transaction.

You also need to stay compliant with fair housing laws. 

So the best place to find how to be compliant is to go directly to the city for answers.

One of the disclosures is "are there any un-permitted structures that the seller is aware of" - if you can show the seller knew or should have known known, there may be some recourse to make it compliant.

If the appraisal is HVCC compliant the comps should be within 1 mile and most recent.

Even if as a broker owner if I call the real estate commission they will just say to anything questionable "NO" you can't do it.Flipping short sales isn't the hard part.Being ABOVE BOARD flipping short sales and fully disclosing to all parties is.Once investors see what they will have to do to be compliant and it makes deals harder to close many will try to cheat the system or bend the rules.When you bend the rules you ride the line and open yourself up to interpretation of the law of what is correct and not correct.Whether it be an agent or investor when they are starving for cash many will choose to play with fire to make money.

So the $200 median isn't a big deal compared to the fines that have been issued already; all you need is one environmental activist to report you to end up paying dearly in fines.My main issue with this is the burdens that go with performing work in a compliant manner.

Every 90 degree turn gives you a 5-foot "penalty" - so if you have four 90-degree turns, that's the equivalent to twenty-feet of straight pipe, and there's only 15 feet of straight pipe left on a code-compliant install (and shorter is going to work much better & clog less).