@James Wise you're right about California's bad leadership. 

What @Jay Hinrichs said - I always preach on here that it is far better to have your place sit empty than to have a bad, or even dubious tenant.

Looking for peoples opinions if the quoted costs are fair to take off the security deposit.TYIA  The charges don't sound bad at all.

PS: Hopefully you did not get beat up too bad on the proffers.

If you just hire the cheapest or first PMC you speak with and it turns into a bad experience, please don’t assume ALL PMC’s are bad and start trashing PMC’s in general.

Meet with a local banker & schedule a time to talk with a mortgage broker, they'll give you at least a baseline of what kind of down payment options and rates are out there.After that, if you're still wanting to research more creative options, do some looking into seller financing (a very hot topic with good, and bad, advice out there), look into private lenders, and commercial financing options.If you're wanting to live in 1/4 of your quadplex, then conventional residential loans may in fact be your best option as you can purchase that with a fannie/freddy loan with very low down, and use up to 75% of the income from the property toward your own income. 

doing a bad deal just to have done a deal will set your finances and your relationship back.

My bad.

Just like most things in life there are good and bad to both choices. 

That’s not a bad idea.