Fees should be clearly stated in writing, easy to understand, and justifiable.

U need equity so you can exit if need be without writing a big check.

As you can tell by my writing I am not a financial wizard. 

Catherine id highly recommend spending a full day or two consuming youtube videos that specifically go into detail about this process, theres so much to teach and writing this whole thing out would literally be a whole book.

Unfortunately many lenders will see this as a red flag and may not take the risk to lend you the rest of the money even if you use stated income program or bank statement program but those are for self employed borrowers who have active income from their business but write off to many expenses that when filling their taxes their net income is really low or sometimes negative.

Depreciation isn't an actual cash outflow [because we+the bank made the actual cash outflow at closing], but we get to write off the cost of the asset as an expense over time.Since cash flow doesn't equal net income, there are different scenarios that can happen. 1) Cash flow can be higher than net income. 

Is it some kind of foundation specialist to start with to at least know what it is and know if there is anything reasonable that can be done, a general contractor, or is this something I just write off as seasonal shifting of the foundation that happens with some? 

The reality is the opposite - if it's not in writing then the PMC doesn't have to provide the service or can charge extra for it!

Write it down on paper and make it a goal that you'd like to find a house hack under a certain price point after being approved.

Take Action = Get pre-approved/deal analysis/write offersI love the plan of purchasing close by.