The special assessments, housing associations, and negative perceptions of tenants make it a tough battle to fight with cashflow.2) How does the rent compare to the cost of the units.

I would not do the "live in flip" at this time given my perception of market risk over the next 1-2 year holding period, but quick flips on amazing deals largely mitigates these short term market risks and if you have a strong equity position on your duplex you are also largely mitigated there.

This is fair since we are forcing the individual whocreated the costs rather than a third party or society to bear those costs.

I am not certain of the exact thread; as Alex said above it is more of a perception that an FHA deal is more onerous on the seller. 

At the very least get connected with a REO listing agent so I might be able to catch a deal before they list it.My ultimate goal is to use REI as a vehicle to help homeless people get reestablished as productive members of society.

It takes a while for perception to catch up with reality.

In our society I find the probability of a home inspector saying "hey, if you find anything I missed within 90 days call me and we'll cover the costs" to be very unlikely.

Obviously I am still young in the whole game so I could change my perception of everything down the road.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/9232/blog_posts/55313-intro-to-section-8---your-perceptions-vs-my-realities

value depends on whos perception you want to consider because its different for each:- appraisal value - how appraisers will determine value for the purposes of obtaining a conventional loan on a fourunit is mostly weighed towards comparable approach in my experience even though the appraisers notes say "most weight was given towards income approach," Ive seen this hundreds of times- subjective value to you as an investor - each investor has their own criteria similar to what others have mentioned above regarding how "they," look at a value- banks underwriting value - may differ from appraisal value if dealing with local portfolio or commercial lender as they use different metrics to adjust appraisal value or listing price to lend only up to their version of "value,"- Market/selling value what the market will actually contract at for that given property, sometimes guessed by realtors as a BPO or broker price opinion.