A solid pre-screening of the contractor upfront that spells out the expectations should somewhat reduce or eliminate the question of one side bailing out on the other.

However, for a commercial property or a commercial residential (5+ unit) property value is based on the income approach and reducing expenses in this case by producing electricity factors into that math and very well might increase the valuation enough to make sense.

This way we reduce our monthly legal expenses and have cash reserves to weather the next few quarters during the virus.

Potentially a 'exclusivity in exchange for reduced fees' or 'reduce per-visit fees as the number of calls increases.'

The investors accepted it.  3 months later the buyer tried to reduce the purchase price to $2.6M to stiff arm the investors. 

You cannot beat the power of an ADU for peace of mind, leveraging your home to pay less monthly and reduce your expenses and give you the experience and confidence of doing constriction, getting permits and working with the city and managing a very easy rental.

I think your income easily justifies a common-sense, time-proven method: increase earnings, reduce expenses, save, and invest.

You can overcome this by putting more down, which reduces you ROE and COC return, but if the appreciation is good enough you can make up for this with overall returns over time as rents increase and the property appreciates.

House hacking with two children can be tougher than expected because you will always need to take a larger or the largest unit which will reduce your cash flow on the property even more.

sometimes to reduce borrowing costs, I'll use a hard money loan solely for the purchase, and then pay for the rehab in cash or use a 0% credit card (I don't recommend that for new investors!)