If this was truly part of her agreement and the current owner will not do the work, then you can choose to do it yourself and eat the cost, or you can reduce your offer.

I did notice how much the taxes eat up the profits!

A house a year with a conventional loan works with housing in my area, but if not rented then I would be eating into that $40k.

It will likely continue to rise over time, eating away at my profits.

Eating trim is probably the worst part - though some are not house trained well either.

So, after 10 minutes of preheating, the stove wouldn't be 425/450 or whatever she was setting it to, because it wasn't preheated enough.Would you charge the tenant the repairman's bill for his base visit cost, or should we eat the cost because we chose to not go over and test what she was claiming, before we called in a repairman?

Mary has a less emotional (or non-spiteful) manner in how she espouses for the benefits of paying higher taxes.Let's not 'eat the rich'.

I am going through a Masshousing program as well and PMI still really eats your cashflow. 

Market TI could eat up a good portion of the lease value depending on the term.

I do believe BTC is already eating into gold's market.