I'm not bringing this up to add to anyone's paranoia, but my opinion of successful deals sliding by is diminishing somewhat.

Bailee use has diminished institutionally as well as in the private market but the contract terms increased to compensate to protect the integrity of the transaction.  

The Seller usually wants to diminish or remove their counter-party risk and execution risk.  

Without diminishing the importance of a good plan, it looks as if 'tis the execution that will ultimately win through on a deal?

Some of this can be diminished by opening your own brokerage after you have adequate experience.

The value of real estate in the general public's eyes has diminished to almost nothing in the recent years, in our experience.

However, your point of "diminishing returns" meaning, $1k flooring versus $5k flooring might not actually enable higher rent is great point I need to explore. 

If you let the equities sit there, you can lose the equities or have it all diminish if we have another downturn.

They've locked up the building, which suggests to me that they have some rights as I would simply cut the locks off if I was the private individual who owned the property a block away.So my questions are:1) clearly this puts a legal cloud over the property that diminishes its value.  

Of course, there is a point of diminishing returns and you have to be cognizant of that.