Are you paying points on the money you are borrowing, or are you paying cash? 

Yeah, it’s kinda crazy to buy a property from the bank where the borrower has redemption rights.

I have looked at so many Loan Estimates where they charge the borrower $8,000+ in closing cost!

(disclaimer here…I do not know anything about your financial profile as a borrower). 2. 3.0-3.5% earnest money deposit (EMD) seems reasonable.

We bought a house in 2005 and I was the co-borrower with my spouse.

if so, is it worthwhile going through the process of getting a 103k to remodel the home and turn it into a multi-family (duplex or triplex) or should I just get an FHA and then use borrowed money to make that happen instead?

.#1 - My guess for why you are claiming residency is you want to get the super sweet loan terms only offered to owner occupied, conventional borrowers. 

You will need to provide 2yrs of tax records showing them you are good to borrow too. 

We're in NY, my wife's mom was in San Francisco, didn't take her laptop with her when she visited, and they had to lookup something on her computer, all she had to do is borrow a laptop, log into the Office 365 account, and do whatever, like pull up a spreadsheet.

I recently got loan information from a HML and was astonished by just how much it cost to borrow from them and the money I still needed to have on hand to get the loan.I just got back from meeting with a business lender at a local bank.