They're hard to find cuz they are busy and also because 95% or all contractors go belly up within a couple years!

A stretch, maybe, but remember people have tried suing McDonald's for making them fat.  

@Jeremy Brown  good points.. but real estate is so regional.. like in your region  Sacramento Placer county etc.. the agent upon opening escrow would have gotten a preliminary title report back from teh title company within 3 to 5 days.. once that is received it would clearly state at the bottom of the report if anyone other than the title owner had an interest they would need to proof themselves up and sign. so in other parts of the country ( and I find this particularly frustrating) especially attorney closing states.. they will not pull title until way deep into the transactions. ( reason they have to pay an abstractor up front to pull title ) and if the deal fails they don't want to be on the hook for the abstractor fee so you don't find out that you have an issue with title many times very close to closing date and this leads to massive frustrations on the buyers side.. ( at least it has for me in these instances. )But your correct the listing agent probably should have or did know that the seller was married and should have gone down those thought process's.. usually your in the home during the listing signup but i know now with docusign this may not be the case as much as it used to be.. as RE is moving away from much of the belly to belly aspects we enjoyed in the olden days 

@Nate Bell I appreciate the insight.

If difficult (ie McDonalds moves out), then I'd walk or ask for fat wet kiss in the form of a price drop.

Who knew being a real estate investor was so glamorous 😂😂😂 No big deal, and makes for a funny story 5 years from now when you're dealing fat stacks all over town :) .

Margins that small... if your vacancy rates are a bit off... management isn't performing right, a lawsuit or two, and you're in the red and getting a fat 0.Am I wrong on that? 

The current COAs areA. buy a house with cash do a live in flip over 2 years, refinance with VA loan take the money and continue to investB. rent and take that fat stack of cash and invest in a 5-10 unit apartment and start to build the empire.

But due to Harvey, even my best contractors were overloaded with fat margin work from insurance companies and non-investors from Houston to West Louisiana - I was SOL and on the search for a new crew.Lucked out a couple weeks later and was able to assemble a small crew to help with all the finishing bits and pieces.

Take a hard look at your finances and trim the fat.