Upon further inspection, I discovered that one of the existing bedrooms also lacks this.The house currently has oil steam heat and a wood stove, which for insurance reasons we are replacing with a gas stove.

All different flavors of ice cream out there.I have seen some buy to hold and said they would never sell but they had a compelling reason like an offer that came in (knocked their socks off) it was so good or they wanted to recapitalize for more existing property acquisitions or new development projects.If you study business it is mainly about PERCEPTION and MARKETING.

not a realtor, but i am curious. in markets already overly saturated with realtors, why would you want to spread yourself so thin. pick and area and be the best and most active realtor for that area, then increase the size of the area as you become known.  

That's not always possible but it exists.

They are going to use the profits of the sale to build an apartment over the existing attached two car garage OR build a tiny house on my property.

@Mark C.You may not do either of the things you propose.You may not transact with your IRA or make contributions to a Roth IRA in excess of the allowable $5500 per year ($6500 if you are age 50 or older).If you have existing IRA funds, those could be setup so as to be able to invest in real estate.

I have a good amount of experience with development locally and if you are buying mostly land then I could see how a title search(along with zoning, utilities, ect.) might be more important with tax deeds than an existing SFR. 

Once you determine where yo want your IRA to be held just tell them you want to do a direct rollover from an existing IRA.

This would allow you to gain control of the property and use the existing equity to cash her out. 

This risk exists with one rental and really even without any rental properties.But I'm not an attorney, so I may be totally wrong on this uneducated opinion.