Appraisers are now on the other side of the pendulum, generally being very conservative with their valuations.It is not uncommon when a house is sold today for the appraisal to "magically" come in right around what the home is selling for.

It is not uncommon for Section 8 to also provide program participants with a subsidy for utilities.

Your issue is not uncommon - consider delegating some/most of the tasks to virtual assistants and/or other people on your team (rehabbers, project managers, realtors...etc).Do the things that you are good at/cannot be delegated like negotiations/talkers to sellers...etc

The agent may be used to selling move-in ready single family homes to owner-occupants where an offer $40k under ask would be pretty uncommon.

For instance, in my area, it's not uncommon for the Leasing Fee to be 6% of the annual gross rent with 10% management every month thereafter.

The notion that this is a very, very uncommon practice makes me worry about who the lender actually is here and that they may not be all that experienced.  

Currently, In Toronto and surrounding areas it's not uncommon to see properties being bought/sold based on cap rates as low as 4-5%.

Often, buyers had 'substitution of collateral' clauses put in private mortgage docs, and it wasn't all that uncommon to have three or more mortgages on a single property. 

But it is also not uncommon for them to become permanently stalled if they fall short on financing or face unanticipated additional cost or regulatory complexity.

One way to go about this is when you buy your next property, a not uncommon practice is to write in a contingency about the sale of your existing home.2) For a HELOC, you're not paying interest on the money if you're not using it.