Lawyer alleges malfunction has to occur for it to be legit, but I had a broken septic pipe previously that was revealed during routine maintenance even though the septic was still functioning ok so he is just wrong about that.

One of the things is a "rotating foundation" that a lot of architects and contractors have looked at but said they have seen worse, but would love to protect our house as an earthquake may be coming, and could also take advantage of the seismic retrograde refund while we were repairing it.

Most likely - with limited capital - your best bet will be to use FHA (3.5%) down financing for something that is functional (that is, it is in good enough shape to qualify for traditional federally backed home financing).

While I did not use the online version, I understand the desktop version has more functionalities.

Who’s responsibility is it to ensure functionality?

They don't always function entirely right so you have to be ready to step in should anything start going wonky.

then minus your taxes, insurance, vacancy, etc etc.... everything except your Principal and Interest (loan cost).After you do all that subtraction, what you have left is what you have to service the loan (let's say $350)You can use Excel's PV function to figure out what your offer looks like.Using 5.5% interest rate (expressed as .055/12), over 30 years (360 months or "periods"), and with $350 month gives you an offer of 61,642.62.

Check out the XIRR function in excel. 

It's a very common LTV, but it's definitely not always5. yes, the bank is going to look at your capacity to repay as a function of what's on your tax returns6. 6 month seasoning is standard but can be much faster if you use delayed finance (which can be complicated).

A lot of this is probably a function of the area and the tenant pool though, and in some areas where the tenant pool is not as good it might be a different story.