My properties are in a lower income area and people have to have a place to live. 2 times the rent is often fine assuming they don't have a brand new car with a relative giant payment. 

Just because gold has had a (relatively) long history of staying power, mostly through European/Middle Eastern society, doesn't mean that it is inherently any more or less valuable than a flimsy piece of rag with pictures printed on it.

But to use it for qualifying income, they require those people to be related.

I've heard stories of landlords keeping deposits to cover real and actual expenses related to damages and/or a tenant breaking a lease and a judge not agreeing with that use of the deposit and awarding damages to the tenant.

Do you anticipate traveling maybe once per year to the location of the property to actually see it or resolve any issue related to it?

It depends on how busy they are and what you're asking for them to do.On a related note, contractors are usually charging to give estimates now due to how busy they are.

My plan is to offer sellers concessions and /or closing costs slightly higher than the option fee to avoid any appearance of those two things being related. 

But hey, it gets the clicks and page views.

We need to make some decisions about the relative value of an unrenovated apartment as a rental, but all the comps we can find are newly renovated...Thanks in advance for any thoughts/advice!

Escalate it to at least some type of supervisor.In terms of how you explain it to the Tenant, I would come at it from a relational perspective, and remind them that you submitted the claim as soon as they alerted you to the problem, and that if this were YOUR heat that were out, you would have to wait the same amount of time.