So you can inspect it without feeling bad and they will very likely understand it

There may be some incentives or local programs that will allow you the first choice to buy an adjacent property.

I guess what I'm trying to illustrate is that you should figure distance into your choice of where to look. 

We just assume the septic is bad and add 35K extra into our rehab estimate (though the last septic we put in cost 50K--complicated pump up system with mounded leech field due to high water table on site--so the difference came out of our pocket).

How to recognize the good ones from the bad ones?

No neighborhood is gong to be consistently a great choice.

It's not a bad commute, maybe about 50 mins. 

Hi @Aimee Gaede,Too bad you aren't in NYC. 

My fear with doing the latter is the fact that a HELOC is looked at like any other revolving line of credit and that would badly impact my DTI...any thoughts?

I've done a bit of research on them and they don't seem so bad to me.