Does anyone have any experience with this type of situation, any guidance on whether this is a deal killer, and what it would take to get this remediated?

Also, you will almost always reduce your value per sq foot when adding a second unit, which depending on your cost to construct the second unit, might be a deal killer.

The guy would be willing to take $5k for it but legal fees may be the deal killer (unless he pays for it.)

Some will charge renewal fees, 1st placement fees (this is a killer if you have yearly turnover), ad fees.

Like I said in my original post this is the killer 70k and 50k respectively to just do this part.

They have some killer loan products, including some zero down options, that don't require you to use the property as your primary residence.We're lucky in that we found one that will allow us to house-hack comfortably for a year or two, so we'll be well within the VA's guidelines for using it as a primary residence for "a period of time." :) Otherwise, we were planning to use NFCU to purchase our first investment so we wouldn't risk ticking off the VA.

Live there for a year, maybe rent a room, and then you can move out and now you have a rental that you purchased with nice owner occupied financing.I bought a rental property first (with 20% down), because the area of Seattle where I rented for $600 - $900 (I had a killer deal), houses cost on average $1mil.

You may have better luck in the suburbs of Austin such as Round Rock, Georgetown, Buda, etc. although those markets are plenty hot as well.As far as the taxes go, they're killer, and city council just passed a $3.7B budget that will make them even higher.

Not a deal killer, but something to understand.

TX property taxes and insurance rates are among the highest in the nation which is a cash cow killer.