I think the living arrangement your referring to is the concept of coliving much in the same way as coworking spaces have started to trend right now for independent workers who don't want to rent an entire office space.

If I were you though, I would try to see if you could stage the basement as a bedroom and add a wardrobe or even add a closet and call it a 3 bedroom.

Refer back to your purchase agreement on this one as it should have an EM clause built into it.It’s fine if you wanted to cancel the contract, there are multiple stages in the purchase process where a buyer has an out.

Are you paying your property management company to arrange for this work to be performed? 

I do think that we are in the infancy stages of crowd funding though and those who choose to properly leverage the tool will be light years ahead of those that ignore it.

The last few weeks have been busy with the kids on fall break and a big project at the day job so here is the next stage of our journey:With the tree house under contact our realtor set us up with the usual MLS listing alerts and we looked at properties every day.  

So, what should I do at this stage?

I believe Andy Kaufman arranged the last East Bay meetup (I was not there), but I’d like to join in and start another.

I think we are still in planning and researching/learning stage because we don't want to make any commitments until he finishes school.

Far too many get stuck in the "paralysis by analysis" stage, thinking they just don't know enough to get started.