If fees are too low, I would suggest keeping them the same for at least one to two years, then slowly incorporate increases.If you pay cash, make sure that you have some sort of clawback ($$) for a certain amount of time if accounts leave in XXXX days.Will the owner stay a certain amount of time to help in the transition?

If they are doing periodic price drops that is a good thing as it may indicate that they have some motivation to sell it ... in that case, I would see if there is a pattern to the price drops, as in they are dropping $10k every 3 months or something like that ... if that is the case you can time your offer as the price gets closer to a good deal, put it in just before they would normally drop the price, but a bit lower than what you suspect they will drop it to.

That would effectively drop your down payment to 4%.This is likely only going to work with a small, local bank, and a seller who's pretty motivated and/or business savvy, though!

The guy is highly motivated and detail oriented.

Reduce the price so that you'll pop up again on the MLS, and it'll show potential buyers you are motivated to sell/willing to negotiate if necessary. 

This sort of appreciation is icing on the cake and should make the discussion easier when i meet with the hard money lenders.

The fact that the professionals are paid by the minute, so there is less motivation for them to get the job done quickly.

I plan to take it once a year from now on just to see all the development real time (sort of).  

If they have an issue it's hard to just put it off if you are literally one door away and those sort of requests may get bothersome.

Zero experience but very motivated to learn and get started.