You could argue that if there is already tenants in there, then you don't need any upfront repairs and just repair as you collect money and tenants move out (therefore comes out of your capex savings)....

I would argue no; the trust is who bought the property, the trust owns the property, you aren't a legal owner of anything and you personally aren't obligated to make those payments. 

@Derrick Ogert I'm not here to argue with you.

I understand it will be a losing battle to argue with a lawyer on contractual issues. 

It's not easy to get at this information, but you might piggy back on some research done by people like Richard Glaeser, who has been arguing for years that it is zoning that makes the biggest difference in housing affordability - basically how easy it is to build.  

Not my cup of tea but can't argue with success!

He redid things the way he wanted (cheaply--which he argued was in my best interest because it saved me money).  

But your time is better spent finding a lender that will work with you rather than arguing with one that doesn't want to work with you.

I would argue that you're probably investing the time to drive out there no matter what. 

I don't know if that also covers ACH transactions; I have a feeling there are probably some specs on that too, maybe from the Federal Reserve.All these requirements are published, and the ways to meet them are known, but you're not going to meet them on a "hire a 22-year-old kid from Craigslist to cut and paste code from StackExchange" budget; it will be more of a "draw up requirements, shop them around to several webdev companies, figure out which webdev companies actually understand what you want, figure out which of those companies aren't going to outhouse it to another country, hire them, and then argue about the bugs and change orders" budget.