We recommend Equity Trust to our members.

It's been so low for so long that you can effectively ignore it for now and just use the 10% minimum, as defined in the CA constitution.)You didn't mention whether you secured your loan by recording a deed-of-trust.

-> I have heard people say every December "the market is going back into 2008 levels" ... for the last 3 or 4 years ... due to normal winter slowdowns.

Everything from the level of finishes you select to the pitch of your roof can drastically impact costs. 

You could also form a trust where all three of you are trustees.

@Luke Pierce, kudos for the level of detail you've inputted.

Every house that’s over 100 years with have some floors that are not perfectly level- so own over a dozen.  

A very, very early stage project I am discussing with a friend is how to track and measure trust on the net.

Or you can just trust that, given the low interest rate on your mortgage and the length of time it'd take to realize the savings (i.e. you don't save all $76k today, you accumulate the savings over 20+ years), that $76k becomes a much smaller number in "real" dollars. 

Trust me.. my ex-husband is a Realtor.