He owns free and clear, just last year performed major rehab and updated the house.

Make a lower offer subject to a reserve public auction, offer the seller a 10% hybrid (10% of anything you get over what you offered), make full disclosures, get right of possession (so you can clean the house up and show it to prospective buyers), build in an extension in the event you need more time and use banking days for settlement.

This is something that has been talked about extensively in RE world and is very apparent here in my locale.

We have a 6 unit and they looked at the performance of that property for financing as well as our personal finances.  

We were able to talk with the seller and the PM and analyze the deal pretty extensively and just submitted our offer yesterday.

But  I have the lanldords policy at 300k per occurrence and don't have the extension from the personal to the rentals (which you may want to have professionally examined to make sure that is the case).

Do not be attached to the outcome.I have a VA call finance companies within a 100 mile radius of where I live and ask if they have non-performing paper.

As an extension to this question, should inflation in be included in any of these calculations?

I understand that the ultimate go/no go decision is mine alone so I perform checks on the info provided.Believe it or not, I did not make this post to whine. 

Someone who has a proven track record to perform quickly and is INVESTOR FRIENDLY.