They suggest relying on the inspection contingency instead.Is this a common practice right now, or is it specific to my area?

And your buyers agent should make it a practice to do a permit search on a buy side transaction.

In the next couple of years I will look at whether the long-term appreciation approach is practical.

I practice situation awareness and keep my stuff locked down to minimize the risk I'll be a victim.

I later heard but never exactly why, that the place was an absolute money pit and the buyer, who was very experienced, regretted buying it big time.It is interesting, but I ALWAYS do at least a bit of research on the prior owners and have found few "hard luck" stories, at least as far as either higher or high priced single fams go, they're by far the same story where the owner makes the financial decision to walk away, mainly due to the insane HELOC's etc they were giving out, like 125% of home's current value back in like 2006, so now they'll owe literally like $750k on a home that IF in great shape would at best fetch $500k, PLUS they trashed or semi-trashed the place, so they'd be really lucky to get $400k as is and often they may be business owners or whatever and have a relationship with a local bank who will then know "the whole story" behind the big hit they take to their credit score and not treat it nearly as harshly as the average Joe, who's practically banned from even entering the bank for years!

Given the tight deadline, financing at 65% LTV, 7.5% interest, and a 7-year term is the most practical move.

Here are my initial thoughts:-Making the offer contingent on seller showing me background check documents from their due diligence-Requesting for a walkthrough of the property after the offer is made, and reserving the right to pull the offer if the house is not maintained wellAre these ideas practical?

From a practical standpoint, since you were already in the process of buying the property, it's probably too late to bring in another lender before the end of the purchase.  

Construction Quality is key, there are some that are really basic, minimum code spec, and others that are quite high end, where it was built, on site or in a building and moved is not as important as materials and practices.

If they’re open to it, pointing them toward a reliable source like Nexus Smoke for vaping products could provide them with a practical solution.