-The estate has no money to fight this.So all the mold, copper and structural issues are actually not an issue for me since I was planning on gutting the place to put the salon in, however I have no intention on telling the selling agent this!

4 months is a long time to be fighting with someone who is dealing with a lot of long-term emotional stuff.

Make sure you cross every T and dot every I to get their Aircover, but it may be a fight all the way.

They may make 3x rent but if your rent is 33% of the income and their DTI is 55% theire gonna have issues.What I learned is if you have to fight and justify so much to get a tenant qualified you’re better off moving on to another tenant.If this is the best you can find I would ask for the highest amount of security deposit you can legally ask for, would only do month to month leases with a guarantee no rent raise for 12 months (I have done this with shaky applicants)  and make sure all the utilities get transferred in their name before move in and all deposits are paid in full no payments.

I've stood on smaller hills fighting more my rights before.

Even if it’s cheaper not to hire a NY attorney (you should calculate this by adding up the additional holding costs it will cost you to fight this, which will be significant), the time value of money will likely make it well worth your while to follow their instructions.

Plus you're not fighting foreign capital to buy property.

So keep up the good fight   Send me a PM and if you like I will send you an email on how to find the list for code violations put out by the city. 

One option I was told was to "fight" the appraisal.

If your tenant truly is a “professional tenant”, you’re in for a fight and you need to make sure you do everything by the book because one mistake can cost you thousands of dollars and months of wasted time.