@Tim Boeving Its not about $90 and $130, you have to count  your deduction on your tax return.

As far as proving it, I've been wondering if email correspondence counts. 

(make sure you count property management cost in anyways when doing numbers)Study and focus all your attention on learning as Ryan says above, but do it now before you leave and while you're analyzing deals.

It seems you are trying to buy a property with little upside and count on appreciation, split the potential cash flow, and pay back your family member through a re-fi down the road.

You need demographics for the area because certain retailers and businesses will only come into an area with certain traffic counts, population levels, and median income levels.     

Pull traffic counts.

That's not counting actually repairing it and he said I'd need to hire someone else to repair the drywall once the water issue is fixed.

A lot of success in this area will come from building a track record and I have met few people that are willing to count my syndicated deals that I invested in as part of that track record nor do most financing parties understand them at all.  

You can't count on or expect agents to jump through tons of hoops for you.

So with this option you are paying $2,750 none of which contributes even a penny to your equity in the home.With option 2, you pay 3.5% or $3500 but every single penny of that counts towards your equity in the home.If you look at it this way, you are out of pocket an additional $750 by choosing option 2 instead of option 1 but now have $3500 of equity in your home instead of $0.The tricky part is that option 2 forces you to pay PMI which you do not have to pay with option 1.