The seller handed me a ledger instead of the HAP contract

Call the housing authority tomorrow, not Friday. Ask for the occupancy specialist assigned to that address and ask three things: what the current contract rent is on file, when the next annual inspection is scheduled, and what their process is for a change of ownership. They'll tell you. The ledger the seller gave you might not match what's actually on file, and the number on file is the one that pays you.

On the roof. Inspectors I've dealt with on the construction side aren't grading remaining useful life, they're grading whether the unit is safe and weather-tight right now. A 12 year old shingle roof that isn't leaking passes. The same roof with a stained ceiling in the back bedroom becomes a fail item, and then you're fixing a roof on the authority's clock instead of yours.

So get up there this week. Not a walkthrough glance, actual eyes on the flashing and the valleys and the underside in the attic. Three or four years of life left is a guess someone made from the driveway.

The gap between $1,015 and the $1,140 standard is not free money. In my experience the increase gets requested at recertification, the authority runs a rent reasonableness check against comparable unassisted units nearby, and if comparable 3 beds in that town rent for $1,000 you're not getting $1,140 no matter what the standard says. The standard is a ceiling, the comparable rents are the test. Also there's usually a notice requirement and a window for requesting it, which differs by authority.

Small town at $118k is my whole world. In two of the rural markets I follow the payment standard sits above what an unassisted tenant will actually pay, which is the reverse of the complaint you usually hear about rent caps. thicket's point about rent reasonableness is exactly why that gap doesn't fully close. Still, at $1,015 on a $118k basis you're at a better rent to price ratio than anything I can find right now.

Four years of tenancy in the same unit is worth more than the $125 of theoretical rent increase everybody is chasing here.

arbor's right and I'd go further. My longest hold is a small duplex where one side has had the same assisted tenant since before I owned it. Nine years now. I have never once had a month where that half of the rent didn't arrive, and I've spent almost nothing on turnover because there hasn't been one. The annual inspection costs me a Saturday and usually a $40 trip to the hardware store.

What I gave up is real. When rents in that area jumped, I watched market landlords move $300 a month and I moved $45 eighteen months later. If you want maximum rent this isn't the program. If you want the same deposit hitting on the first for a decade, it's hard to beat.

The part I'd worry about is the $190. That's the whole margin, and girder just described a roof that could eat six years of it in one week. juniper, what's your actual reserve at closing after the down payment and costs? If it's under about $8,000 on a house with a roof question, the $190 is a number on paper and nothing else.

Let me put verity's worry in numbers. Rent $1,015. A roof on a small single story is call it $9,500 in most markets right now, spread over 20 years that's $40 a month, except you're inheriting one with a few years left so the real accrual is closer to $200 a month for four years. Add $60 for the water heater and the furnace on the same logic and 5% for vacancy even in a market with a waiting list, which is $50.

Your $190 goes negative before I've touched maintenance or the possibility that the authority's payment pauses for six weeks over a failed item. That's not an argument against the deal. It's an argument that the deal is a capital improvement project you finance out of pocket for four years, and then it's a good rental. Decide whether you have the cash for that, because the rent doesn't.

Ask the tenant directly what's been broken and never fixed. Four year tenants have a list and sellers don't.

One flag nobody said plainly: whether you take title subject to the existing lease and what notice the tenant is owed depends on the landlord-tenant statute in that state, and it varies a lot. Your closing attorney should confirm it in writing before Friday rather than after. Separately, pull the tax card and check whether the assessment resets on sale in that county, because $118k of purchase price against an old assessed value can move your escrow more than the roof does.

I've been circling deals like this for a year and the thing that keeps me out is exactly your Friday deadline. Three weeks isn't enough time to get a straight answer from an authority, verify the contract rent on file, get a roof looked at properly, and price the reserve ledger just laid out.

So my question back to you is whether the seller will extend the inspection period a week. If the answer is no, ask yourself why a four year stable tenant and an eighty five percent government-paid rent roll is being sold in a hurry with a ledger instead of a contract. Might be nothing. Might be that the last inspection didn't go well and there's a correction deadline you haven't seen yet. I'd want to know which before I released a deposit.