Desperate seller or good arguments on your side or hopelessly overpriced or all of the above or...?

If it's dead or alive and it hits someone else, my liability covers the issue.

In the process of buying an REO 4 plex. Owner is still in one of the units. My conventional loan cannot fund because the owner (holdover tenant now) or foreclosing bank will not cooperate in getting a wall heater inst...

Consider seller financing some or all of the assignment fee.

Aside from cashing out a portion or all of that account and taking the tax hit, does anyone have any strategic/alternative suggestions?

As far as paying the 3.5% out of pocket, there was a grant to cover some or all of this (not sure if it's still available).

I'm in San Diego also it's a little tougher market over here since prices have sky rocketed and the banks require a large down payment unless you're doing FHA or all cash of course.

If you inherited it free and clear, doing a cash out refinance should give you the liquidity to do much or all of the work.

@Annette Hibbler is this just Detroit or all of Wayne county?

:D  Sometimes I have more success with going to Google and doing searches like "rehab budget site:biggerpockets.com"; Google has indexed most of the posts here, and searches like that use Google's keyword handling - you can search for exact phrases using quotes, avoid "or" searches, etc.I think the "advanced" search here on BP gives you more options - you can search a particular forum, or all posts from a particular author, or posts before or after a certain date, etc.