I've built everything from a shed to mid-size hotels.I am a licensed contractor and can gladly help with rehab projects and construction advice.

What we generally due is instead of looking at an investment from a cost of capital or weighted cost of capital basis is to use a hurdle rate, an interest rate at which we demand a specific return.

Can anyone shed any light on my situation?

We discovered that most of the old cedar & roofing debris was left in the attic & the weight was starting to collapse one of the ceilings.

Cleaned up the landscaping a bit, painted, I put new shingles on my shed out back which I got for cheap at habitat for humanity. 

Before you make a decision out of aggravation: weight the pros and cons.

I do think that if the other agent is easy to work with and pulls a lot of the weight (as often buyer's agents do) a nice bottle of wine and a pre paid gas card would be a very nice gift!

This can easily cause the economy to go sideways for a while since it is a negative weight on so many industries.

I have spent a lot of time on insurance and I do believe someone specializing in real estate and what we do are worth their weight in gold.

So while private lenders that are friends, family and close business associates rely on the character of the borrower, and not the property, it is becoming increasingly common for hard money lenders to put more weight on that aspect.