Paying a local photographer $350 to scan a building I haven't flown out to see yet

$470 for six units and common areas is a fair price and on the low side of what I'd expect for a same-week turnaround on a building that far out. Ask him two things before you book it. First, whether he'll shoot the mechanical room, the panel, and the roof hatch area, because most residential scanners skip anything ugly by habit and you want the ugly parts. Second, whether he'll do a handful of ordinary photos alongside the scan, close up, of the water heaters and the electrical. The scan resolution is fine for space and terrible for reading a label.

One thing worth pinning down in the same conversation as the price: who owns the file. Scanning platforms host the model on a subscription, and if the photographer's account lapses or he decides to stop paying for hosting, your $470 becomes a dead link. Ask for the raw output or at minimum a written commitment on how long it stays live. I've seen agents lose a whole year of tours that way.

$470 against $700 plus a day and a half of your time isn't really the comparison. It's $470 against nothing, because if the scan looks fine you're still flying out. Do it because it might kill the deal, not because it saves the trip.

@marlow has it right on the framing and I'd add the tenant piece. Six occupied units means six notices, and a scanner needs 30 to 45 minutes inside each one with nobody moving through the space. That's a real imposition and somebody has to coordinate it. If the seller's broker is handling access, ask what happens if two tenants refuse. You'll pay for a scan of four units and still not know about the other two, which are exactly the ones the broker already flagged.

Also build in that the photographer is not your inspector and won't flag anything. He'll shoot a ceiling stain and think nothing of it. You get what you notice yourself in the model.

Access is the thing. In a lot of states the notice requirement for entry is set by statute and the lease can't shorten it, so check what applies where the building sits before anyone promises you a two day turnaround. That's a question for the seller's attorney or a local property manager, not for the photographer.

Your 45 percent load on $6,150 is doing a lot of the work here and no scan will test it. 1968 brick, six units, likely one boiler and shared water. If the seller pays heat, 45 is optimistic. I'd want the last 24 months of utility bills before I'd want pictures. The photos tell you if the kitchens are 1990 or 2015. The bills tell you whether the 7.3 is real.

Buy the scan, and be honest with yourself about what it's for. It answers one question well: what condition and vintage are the interiors, and are the four unseen units materially worse than the two you have photos of. That's a real question and $470 is cheap for it. If the answer is that all six are 1990 kitchens and original bathrooms, you now know your capital number is $15k to $20k a unit and you can decide whether to keep going before you spend $700 and a day.

What it doesn't do is any of the things that actually kill this deal. Roof age, the sewer lateral, the panel capacity, whether the basement floods, whether the boiler is at end of life. @bramble is right that the utility bills matter more than the pictures if the seller pays heat, and I'd ask for those in the same email so they arrive together.

So sequence it. Utility bills and leases first, they cost nothing and take a day. Scan second, as the thing that decides whether you get on a plane. Trip third, and when you go, you go with a list of eleven specific things to touch rather than a general look around. The scan makes the trip better even when it doesn't cancel it.

On your last line, delay and diligence look identical from the inside. The test is whether you've written down what result would make you walk. Write that down before the file arrives.