So what happens if you finish the flip, then the buyer's home inspections reveal a bad sewer line (or some other big surprise), which costs $8k and takes 60 days?

If the inspection reveals more than $10K of deficiencies, you can back out.

Originally passed on the TAT to the guest (military family), but it was revealed to me that they were exempt from paying this tax.

Third, your inspection would have revealed they were occupied so you should have investigated further to determine who the tenants were, the terms of their lease, their rent rate, if they have a deposit on file, their payment history, and several other things.You bought a property without verifying what you were buying.

It hasn't been revealed if there was a CO detector, sometimes people unhook them when they think it is malfunctioning because they don't smell anything.

Just be careful what you reveal and I always tell my clients to just be quiet, listen and say nothing.On the other end, sometimes other brokers in an office sit open houses for the listing agent in an attempt to pick up clients.

That is how many days the property was in use so will reveal your in service date. 

For those interested, here are some of the poll results from a December Inman Special Report regarding online leads...In this report* published by Inman, it was revealed that online leads continue to drive business strategies in real estate as we roll into 2018 (with a significant portion of user reviews in this survey claiming that online leads played a role in at least 80% of their incoming sales).

The alternative is not spelling that out in the contract, but if you run into an issue, you can negotiate an extension for just that particular issue, so let's say you had to do a Phase II and your report didn't come in yet, you can extend the inspection period for however many days your vendor expects it to take, but you can only terminate if an environmental issue is revealed in the report, not for "any or no reason" anymore, not if you don't like something on a new report you decide to get, or on a survey you already had, etc., just that limited issue.

When I remove my financial situation, opinions, wants, budget, personal basises as much as possible, the equations reveal positive value that I haven't been close to getting with my other research & investment hunting.