Examples are whether payments are going to be made monthly or quarterly, and what the interest rate will be within the commonly accepted "reasonable" range.While your mother would not be a disqualified person to your wife's 401k (at least not based on that family relationship), it is still important to make sure that plan investments are still in the best interest of the plan and not the plan participant or others with whom you have relationships.

In the rental scenario, I will have to pay income tax on the rent, but the mortgage interest deduction is the same right?  

There is no homestead exception applied...but I will also lose it in my current house if I rent it, so ...I'd like to go with the worse case scenario.

But just keep at it and you'll eventually find good people with a common goal to work with.

It is very common for homeowners in a neighborhood to not own the minerals beneath their land as developers usually do not transfer the minerals over in the deeds.

There's plenty of appetite and it's actually quite common. 

I have an attorney now and if we get to a common ground I'll definitely be getting him involved. 

In this scenario, it sounds like the rehab property would not be owned by the IRA "(let's say property was purchased with another loan)".

Is this common?

If there aren't two ways out of all of the bedrooms (common with basement rooms), then you might have to install an egress window, or quit calling a particular room a bedroom.You mentioned the fireplaces; why aren't they safe?