Not to mention you could have other damage (i.e. burn marks in carpet, etc).  

And pursue your passion, your dream, your vision, and feed your burning desire to succeed. 

Cons- It attracts unwanted behavior. 

I spoke to the appraiser who appraised my building 2 years ago when I was first going through the purchase transaction and he states that too many banks have been burned on using the cost approach with people paying too much or over-improving their investments which has caused most people in the industry to only use sales and income approaches to properly appraise a property.

During the crash there was an abundance of unwanted properties.

As an extreme example, if the house burns down can you get out of the purchase agreement even if you may have been the cause? 

Thank you Jon Burns for the input.

I ultimately want to buy something and live in it, and I want to stay in LA, so while being a good investment on its own merits is important, what seems to matter most is that it be better than renting.I'm sure that this has been asked/answered elsewhere on the site so I'll be digging in to see what I can find, but it's the most burning question on my mind the last few days, so I figured I'd package it in with my introduction as well.Cheers, and looking forward to getting to know many of you over the coming weeks/months!

Thanks much @Jon Burns. and @James Moore.

So if a fortune 500 company wouldn't accept that property, I sure as heck would not.Also, I could be wrong but I believe one way these companies stop the contamination is to burn the dirt.