Plus, one months rent is never enough to cover costs after a tenant leaves (well, the places are often trashed).From the comments it seems like 1.5x rent is not unusual.

$14,000 at closing on a mortgage in that range does seem unusual... is she able to items what exactly the $14,000 is for? 

I bought mine for 10K and have my money out already, but it's just such an unusual situation and I would have never in a million years expected something like this.But then the '2 government offices not talking to each other' is no so unusual, as you rightly pointed out.

When you say, "The market value appraisal indicated that their share of rent should be $925" that sounds like an unusual interpretation of what you get from an appraisal.3.

"life hack - a usually simple and clever tip or technique for accomplishing some familiar task more easily and efficientlyHouse hacking then would in general informal.So a house hack would be an unusually clever way or technique for owning a house (or being a real estate investor).So how many ways can you house hack? 

Fining a motivated seller that wants to wait 30-45 days and make repairs to the house passes the mort co inspection, is an unusual situation. 

As a banker - that's where my mind went - extremely unusual at minimum.

This is not unusual. 

Im still a newb to REI and have an unusual position but need some advice from more experienced investors.

The bottom line: it is highly, highly unusual to have two or more applicants with equal applications at the same time.