There's over 8,000 lenders in the US...I can't speak for them all but this is what you should expect. 

Happy to send over my list of real estate attorneys that work in the Cincy area who can help.

She didn't like it and said someone had offered her over 100k.

With that in mind, would you target a new construction spec built home over a more expensive resale?

With standard ceilings, and single-story I would expect to spend about $100k for basic turnkey on that addition with a hungry builder. 

We purchased another house and are finishing remodeling it and have about 20k left to spend to finish and move it (cabinets and countertops) and this will be our primary residence.  

Over lunch yesterday I  was discussing with a friend how the business has evolved in recent years.

You make more and more money over time.

Get a few of those and read them - that way you can start to get familiar with what kinds of things can happen in a house, and how big of a deal it is to fix each one of them.If there are any new houses being built in your area (like, within bike or bus/train range), and the neighborhood is relatively OK, go over to that neighborhood, after the workers have left for the day, and see what building a house looks like. 

I did a 100 lot project and we made a little over 10k net per lot but i did buy the land for 200k cash and spent 100k on entitlements it took 24 months..