@Jerry MillerIn addition to Dmitriy's great response, the terms on the loan are set by your plan's loan policy.

Are there factors within my control or specific to my situation that influence this, or is it purely based on lender policy?

These quotes are for a commercial policy (can you cover an LLC property with a personal policy?).

Question: would the capital gains tax be calculated individually after the profits are disbursed, or do I have to process that prior to disbursement and subtract out the estimated tab amount?

Normally the settlement agreement would stipulate something like: you and/or the seller pay a much reduced amount of fines (I think on one occasion it was agreed a > $500,000 fine would be reduced to $20,000) to the city and the city will drop the outstanding violation, in exchange you agree that you will actually remedy the violation(s) within a certain amount of time (apply for the appropriate permits and so on).If you are confident that you can negotiate with the city and resolve it that way, it may be logistically easier to buy the house with the violations, and then resolve them aftewards (my first point)... but it's obviously MUCH safer for you to come to a binding agreement with the city prior to closing (that stipulates that the city gets paid for whatever they agreed to accept for the violations right after closing).

The prior owner is out of the picture.  

I served 5 years in the Navy working in military medicine prior to moving to Pittsburgh.

They will do a credit check and look at the credit score of the applicant(s).Prior to closing they did a verification of employment that took 2 days.

I sought out to find my own references, but wasn't able to find any (even after posting here on Bigger Pockets).For the time being, I'm sticking with a simpler approach of having a good Umbrella insurance policy and one LLC holding the few properties that I own.Would love to hear what you end up doing, Jessica S.

The land has had proposed lots approved by the county before(prior owner).We had twins a few years ago and our living expenses skyrocketed an put us in a less than wonderful financial situation.