It's a simple matter of having a conversation with another human being, and during that conversation being able to elicit information necessary to determine if the property is a deal for you or not.1.

I do not expect to gut the home which is why I'm estimating 23k (includes landscaping), but you never know with a home built in 1910 ;-) It will be a rental so most of the finishes will be pre-love/salvage/Habitat for Humanity store.We plan to get bids for the work outside his scope after I get the house under contract.

Human capital (your education and knowledge) as well as networking (connections) are both things you have control over.

Are you moving as fast as humanly possible when a deal comes available?

@Sean Carroll,Realeflow has a factory full of robots which "hand-write" letters and envelopes using ball point pens and even make subtle mistakes to make it look human-written.

In my opinion, it would be human nature for him to have some ill feelings from the negotiation if you demanded a reduction down to $143k.Was this tenant screened, or are you just taking the turnkey operators word that they are a good fit for your property?

Contact the sellers to see if they are interested in selling (seller financing) or donating to an organization like Habitat for Humanity?

What kept coming up for me is that the human brain is hardwired for connection. 

He doesn’t control property values.There’s certainly a human factor in this story.

As far as book, outside of every major leadership book these are the ones that stand out in my head regarding mindset:The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do IN BusinessAccidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and ContentThe Two-Income TrapSuper Crunchersand Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions (reading this one now)