.- have a second baby- spend more time practicing and playing piano- play tennis more often- hit the gym again to get my 6 packs back.

Hopefully your new build is near a dental practice. ;-)

Your questions/comments are a mix of strategy, financial evaluation and practical advice.

The accounting approach is taking the lower of cost or market value, so at this point you're establishing your actual cost.So long as your land value is reasonable and can be justified through acceptable accounting practices the IRS usually accepts the value, unless there are really big bucks involved.Ask you tax advisor, I'm an accountant type but I don't do taxes.Had you stated the value in the contract, that would have been the agreed price unless you were obviously trying to pull something, like saying you bought a 100K lot for 10K.

Email is cheap, practically free and doesn't have to be spam.

Am motivated, savvy, practical, realistic and fair.

Personally I think eventually banks will go back to their loose lending practices of 2005 to 2008, but there will be a new loan product, like the stated income loan product, that banks and Wall Street will be pushing.

Even if we can't come to terms at least it's good practice with the numbers and the negotiating.

Even better would be to not make any payments during rehab and pay Principle and Interest in full at closing, but I don't know if this is standard practice?

As a general practice, we do not refinance unless we absolutely must {sometimes you really need want that 18-unit building} or there is an obvious advantage to refinance {i.e. we can secure a new interest rate 0.4-0.5 below our existing rate}.