Real estate transactions can make the most rational of people go a little nuts. For everything you think you're doing to protect yourself from extra costs of downright being taken advantage of, there are people in the world who know how to get what they want at your expense. (A friend of mine tried to sell her house to a "normal family" so turned down an offer from a guy who was shopping for a house to use as a group home. So he sent someone else to make an offer and it still ended up becoming a group home for probationer sex-offenders. Not what she wanted and not what the neighbors needed.)