I know an SFR is feast or famine, but you must have a plan on how to pay the mortgage, insurance & property taxes without a tenant.Having a MFU myself, it's much easier for me to sit in the cheap seats and harp - - but the economics are just screaming here - - you didn't have a plan B for such an occurrence.I guess there's several lessons: No Felons, no Lawyers and have reserves to cover vacancies.

Great deal on the primary, pretty good deal on the investment property (in 2011), but not screaming "Detroit" kind of deals.  

The key is to learn the very important lesson that this incident is screaming at you.  

I am good with business being business, and blood is thicker then water, so I don't have a problem with working with family, but I know how people get about money, and don't want to loose a good friend over a bad deal.  

I hear ya on Inner city Charleston though the main issue there is so many buggered up title issues you can spend all the money on marketing get what you think is a screaming deal and the title is so fouled up it will cost 5 to 10k to clear up and take years.

I still blew my top though because it was a screaming good deal that I almost lost.Good luck,Ed

IE sale subject to my partners approval.. excessive Due diligence periods IE 60 and 90 days.. 100 dollar EM all of that to me just screams of Bush league. 

To me it screams taking advantage of people that are new to the industry.  

For an investor, those are a sweet siren song that screams a fix-up and $$$ :)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.I would suggest filtering by any language that screams "Distressed Seller".