Most of the homes we have sold seems to come down to quality of finish and the price with buyers fighting everything tooth and nail until the day of close.The average cost of staging a home for the duration of the selling period or the staging company minimum charge (3 months) is $2500 which is a good chunk off the bottom line. 

I can't fight much with taxes and insurance so maybe I'm overkilling Vacancy/CapEx/Property Mgt or the houses I'm looking at are in a high tax area or a combination of the two ...Here are my numbers for ref (ARV $150k, $95l loan, 20% down-5%-30years): Insurance $1,200 /year $100 /month HOA $350 /year $29 /month Property & School Tax $4,500 /year $375 /month Vacancy 10% of rent $130.00 /month Capital Expenditure/Maintenance 10% of rent $130.00 /month Property Mgt 10% of rent $130.00 /month Loan Payment $6,120   $510 /month Total Expenses $10,728   $894 /month Total Monthly Expenses $1,404 Rent $1,300 /month

The only way to fight it is to take care of your body, exercise, etc. - so you can get the most out of the time you have on your hands.  

This will at least get the conversation started and you can go from there... and with some luck you might just reach an agreement and save both of you some time fighting this.

You can sometimes fight the appraisal, as for a review or a second opinion but that's an uphill battle.

If you can afford the 5-10% to go conventional, ask for a one-time / up front MI, this will remove the need for a monthly PMI payment and then fighting to remove that requirement later.

Just have to recognize it and fight through it.Hope this helps. 

Property taxes are a source for any municipality to use as its tax base, sources from while to fund all municipal expenses like street clean up, street lighting, traffic lighting, police and fire fighting service etc. etc. 

Also, if your only paying $275k for the property, I would fight the assessors and get it valued correctly.  

and I am the poster child for those.. losing hundreds of thousands and probably over a million in the asset class and first to acknowledge it.. was not fun and I could live to fight another day..