However, despite Minh's generous offer for me, I will NOT be buying dinner and drinks for everyone (25+ people last time!)

That gesture almost always relaxed the seller and the apprehension largely disappeared.

Without ANY other monthly expenses, you are at a DTI of 51% - just with the house expense - which already exceeds Fannie Mae's most generous allowance for Debt to Income.  

You went above and beyond with a full refund, you probably would have been fine with a smaller gesture.

Second, a 55% profit margin is a generous assumption.

I plan to use this aggressively to purchase new things, but still at my price point its making it much harder to justify itemizing over taking the standard deduction.Being very generous here are my tax write off #s.

That's if we are being generous, because he claims to have gotten a salary bump (perhaps in those two years).That implies he made around $750k in rent and capital appreciation in two years (or a shorter time period if you consider they didn't buy a house until 9 months had passed after the first purchase).Now I know that Seattle home prices have been on a tear for the past few years, but that's a lot of appreciation, right?

Sadly, some servicemembers try to take advantage of the generous benefits bestowed on them by the Government and use it to their advantage. 

.  :-)That's SUPER generous of you to offer to answer questions! 

They really are a great group of guys and are very generous and helpful.