nothing pointed at you personally but there has been build to rent projects were investors had to put up 50k non refundable and never got their house built.. so I can see putting it in escrow and releasing it upon closing for sure.. thats what i personally do with my new builds although since we average 25 to 75k of upgrades per house buyers have to stroke non refundable checks directly to us for those items.

Quote from @John Laseter: Good morning all, Saturday afternoon a gentleman knocked on my door and produced a postcard that I had sent to his house offering to buy it.

when i worked for a syndicator back in the late 80s and tax reform hit.. they had all sorts of problems which eventually took the entire company down and they had over 250 different partnerships ( different buildings apartments senior housing MHP shopping centers land development  the land development was what I was employed to work on.).And this was prime Northern CA real estate Bay Area and Sacramento..

There is not a separate entrance to the basement, but the stairs to the basement are in a laundry room in the back part of the house.

That has a different purpose in life and you should leave it alone to be there for you down the road (especially since you have other money and income available).Just know that the whole "stop working my job" thing is a long term goal.  

All these providers have in-house PM and have already done major capex so I think I've minimized my risk as best as I can, but again this is as much about the education as anything else so I'm trying to keep that in mind.Anyway, I look forward to this experiment with excitement and I'm cautiously optimistic it will go well.  

The new owner has not authorized the work on house.

Trying to house hack in Los Angeles which is obviously really difficult.

My duplex had an additional unit built in the basement and discovered by city inspectors when a neighboring squabble caused buildings department to check houses on the block and my house had 3 mailboxes out front.

I see a problem with a lot of saturation in that area, and I can imagine that it is very difficult to stand out, and anyone that does operate one of those condos, would you do it again, or would you try to get a house next time?