For a home with older character people are tolerant of some imperfections but a lot depends on your price point. 

hi Lee,This is going to be a difficult answer for a data nerd, but you aren't going to be able to get super granular about maintenance and cap ex without defining a narrow asset class.

I exited the rate race at 30 and now work 10-15 hours per week managing my RE assets...the restof the time is spent chasing my two young kids around and traveling 60-90 days per year...my advice to you is to define what you want your life to look like (you did a pretty good job of that in your post, ie beach, amazon etc.) and that can certainly change along the way but what you don't want to do is keep moving the bar.  

The Property Investor's Network of Toledo, PIN is holding its first meeting next week Tuesday, January 10th, 6:00 PM at Augsburg Lutheran Church, 1342 W Sylvania Ave Toledo OH 43612.I joined the group at the end of Summer while they were organizing and defining themselves and currently am an interim board member until 2017 elections are held.

Define your buying criteria and execute. 

Take a written list of questions with you to the meetup so that you go with a defined purpose. 

Partnerships where the roles are not clearly defined (which is what you have here) are going to be even harder.

Somewhere in the contract it should define normal "buyer and seller closing cost" including who pays for title insurance.

Their character (or lack thereof) is no longer in question.  

By that logic, so long as we have the terms of our arrangement clearly defined, we could protect ourselves from such a blunder in an audit.