@Sandy Gabin i anticipate the worst case scenario, so i would assume there would be heavy traffic throughout the house. im going to preserve the wooden floors for when i decide to sell the home (would appraise higher). the current town i own a duplex in has a rent range of $1,400 to $2,000 on the same street. the higher end apartments have hardwood floors, and laminate waterproof flooring in the kitchens.

Moises is correct, those types of cities and those that have building restrictions, historical preservation laws, etc..I live up here in Burlington, VT and we have a predominance of places that were built at the turn of the century and are deemed historical. 

Thank you everyone for your input.After discussing it with my wife, we will be contacting them (they are out of town right now) and saying in an effort to make sure that you continue to have a great experience in the home, we are doing a property preservation inspection. 

That of course assumes you've done your banking and accounting properly in order to successfully preserve the corporate veil.Umbrella liability insurance seems like a more robust defense, but perhaps I'm missing something?!

Are you trying to grow your wealth or preserve it? 

preserve your cash as much as possible. you would be looking for some sort of owner builder loan. still some lenders doing them but need to be a strong borrower, on paper at least...

But since I haven't seen the inside yet, I need to see if the foundation is stable and if we can preserve the structure.

In order to preserve good neighborly relations, we split the cost of having it removed. 

To preserve discretion of the deal terms I will not include the real financial numbers. 

Uniformly it is the same data, no underlying performance data to support the positions and values, so what is it, why would persons buy into stocks at above fair market valuation trading price, it is a rush to preserve capital.Now the real scary thing is we are seeing this happening simultaneously across all asset investment class's; stocks, real estate, gold & silver etc etc etc.