There are numerous part time agents in this area doing in excess of $3 million annual volume.I know this comes down to my own goals and risk tolerance, but do any of you have an opinion or advice when deciding who to go with?

That property has been for sale for a while on numerous sites. 

While they're great and have invited me over numerous times for a beer and BBQ, I don't want to blur the lines of our Tenant/Landlord relationship.

. :) Gotcha, makes sense and appreciate the explanation!

Along the way the GC and subcontracted plumber mentioned numerous times that they found great news or thought of more efficient solutions (i.e. the mainline plumbing under the basement was intact--that they had assumed was all broken and needed replacing).

They could be unsavory for numerous reasons (as an extreme they could be child molesters or drug dealers).  

Yes too numerous to describe in a short reply - plus ethical issues

.* If you are moving just a short distance from the current PR and/or moving from a SFH to multi, then make sure you have very good explanation letter to convince the underwriter why they should approve this purchase as an owner occupied.With regards to the financing options, I always prefer conventional, so PMI eventually drops off.

Should I get a new appraisal before turning it in to the county or write in an explanation that the dining room is not a bedroom and not worry about it b/c despite the # of bedrooms it still appraised much lower than the assessor has it?

Then he discovered the judge from Housing court had previously put a demo order on the house due to a past owners negligence and not correcting numerous code violations, also recorded on title.