The Inspection
After making an offer sight-unseen, we opted to hire our own home inspector (instead of going with our realtors' "recommended" inspector 1) who is also a Contractor with experience working on old homes.
We had known what we were getting into, but our unsuspecting inspector did not.. He was quite shocked by the state of some parts of the house.
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Notes
1. It is apparently quite normal for these recommendations to involve kickbacks. Not that this is necessarily bad for anyone involved... but we would prefer to align with our best interest as many of the incentives involved as possible.