By assigning the option you can still sell it down the road without having to hold it for a year to get capital gains vs income tax treatment.

Your professional education requires effort and a maturity level beyond the level of college students attending frat parties or youthful happy go lucky work ethics.

The encouraging investment mantra is just spin.If you value the old Protestant work ethic you should favor taxing it fairly.

The only issue I see here is if for some reason it doesn't pass the test post-rehab, I will then have wasted a considerable amount of money as the liability/ethical issues surrounding its rental or sale would be too great to assume.Any advice here is greatly appreciated!

Do not question my ethics.

I am sure there are, but Attorneys, generally, are ethically limited in their ability to reach out to prospective clients.

The dispute went into ethics committee for the escrow company and will be tied up for a least one week. 

There is such a simple answer (or 3 or 4 actually) but I'm not in the habit of giving advice to people that are disingenuous and not willing to be ethical in their dealings with others.  

Get three treatment estimates from reputable companies in the area and include those as well.  

Also can you give me an idea of Lead treatment as well, how is it done?