These activities include shopping for mortgage, communication with lenders, going to open houses, doing comps for putting in an offer, analysing disclosures, and closing activities.

my insurance went from $1200 to $2400 to $3800 in 3 years.Doing a shop this weekend. 

Shopping today is imperative.

A home equity loan gives you an option of having fixed debt which is safer if you plan on using it to buy a long term rental buy and hold scenario.

In fact, even no one else and lose another month of rental income would be a safer option than to allow this person.

These loans DO meet my criteria, so I feel they are safer than many of the funds I looked at.If I'm in a state, like Texas, with great foreclosure laws, this, for me, is no more risky than buying the property for all cash at the price point equal to the loan balance.

I think the rule was more meant for manufacturing/machine shops given a few of the examples in the regulation.

I don't know, but you would 100% want to check in with the existing optometrist, maybe they don't get "walk in" business anyways and do not care and wouldn't mind the like-minded neighbors (I've had mortgage neighbors before, and do not care -- I do mortgages they don't, case in point office mortgages across the country, so I wind up getting business from them), but an ice cream shop is going to be LIVID if you rent the unit next store to a frozen yoghurt shop, since that's a LOT of walk-in business that's now getting split two waysAnd then to make it really fun, here's the question I'll throw back at you.

This way buyers can then shop buyer agents and the commission should be negotiated purely between buyers and buyer's agents which would result in zero possible collusion. 

The lenders can be your best friend and shop it around to a lot of lenders.