In my personal experience (might have just been the individual and not representative of the company), they did not get up on the roof, they did not get into the crawl space, and they missed a handful of minor but worthy issues I would have noted inside the house.

I've got access to good title search tools and data due to my business associations in commercial real estate appraisal, so it sounds like I just need to put in a little more legwork and familiarize myself more intimately with building codes and structural red flags and bid more aggressively on these properties.Thanks again, invaluable input from all! 

Money wise you have an asset that costs you and maybe you can access the equity while she is alive.

Are there railings on any porches or landings and if there are, are the spaces between the balusters smaller than 6"?

She has access to a lot of different programs.  

If anyone else had access to the basement at any time , that gives reasonable doubt in the eyes of the law . 

We do however have a conservative $150k equity in our primary residence as well as access to other forms of credit to get the job done if needed. 

Though I have no interest in the transactional job of real estate, these sort of things (doing management, easy access to properties on the market) make getting my license more and more attractive on a practical level.

What I did is put stuff in garage for a month and discount rent for new tenant by $50 for first month to compensate for no access to garage.

They have a 6 month "seasoning" period, which is pretty decent in the lending space.