After only a little backing and forthing, I reached an agreement with the sellers of the house in East Palo Alto and I now have a signed purchase agreement. Escrow is open and I’m waiting for the preliminary title report. We’ll see how things look in the title department shortly.
One interesting thing I discovered in my preliminary inspection: the garage was converted to an additional bedroom and a laundry room— both useful things for increasing the sales value when I’m done. Now I just have to go down to the city building department and pull the permit history to see if this was done with permits (probably not) and find out about legalizing it (if not.)