At the end of the day, you are taking a risk and you have to make the best decisions you can with the information you have available along with your intuition and of course at all times must obey all fair housing, anti discriminatory laws or practices.

It is common practice for them to pay the 11.5% for Walton and Okaloosa counties and 12.5% for Bay County, and the renters pay the cleaning fees. 

In practically all these cases, the first thing I did was serve them with a 30-day notice to quit to terminate the old tenancy.

If you are saying that it is $150K up front, and two more payments of $150K than that is called a net commission deal in that he is getting the overage of what you wanted on a net basis and what the bank has agreed to pay and is outside normal practice but not unknown. 

Depending on what kind of architecture practice you want to have, it could help your expertise as well as your own finances.  

Practice doing calculations on potential properties as they come on the market to enhance not only your understanding of REI in your area but also to develop an idea of what a great deal looks like.

Please share experience on this if you have some, I'd love to know some best practices.

Not sure if that was because of the large increase in the value or just standard practice.

This will mitigate the practice of HOA Boards and their lawyers taking on narrow and special interest litigation that is funded by home owners without community approval or benefit.

@Derek Lacy - You are the insurance expert and I'm sure there is some official definition of "self-insured", but I was referring to the practical effect of it, that is, I (self) pledged my resources to stand behind and cover whatever property damage might have occurred.