It's a win for NAR actually IMO (they avoided potential bankruptcy if they didn't settle and lost, and the fine isn't really that much for them.

Person to person deals will always be fine because those are arms length if neither person has a license.

But yes, if you only have 1-5 properties and wnat to do your own books, you will be fine (I would still have a Book-keeper come by 1x month and get everything squared away)Of course when you have a lot of properties, this will just be a confusing nightmare.

I m an agent who works with New Western and I would like to offer you an explanation, first we are the ONLY reliable wholesale market supplier who will show you everything at front, we offer a package ,this property package which is btw free ,has ALL the information for you to make an informed decision, but we are not an education center provider, second we didn’t keep your money and disappeared we helped you to get a deal maybe not a good one for you , that’s why is always good to either be a realtor contractor hard money lender otherwise you will ALWAYS be spending extra money on those people, we deal with savvy buyers and few times will deal with first timers and the reason we don’t deal much with unexperienced is because first timers need time and they are quite slow and our houses are gone normally in a couple of days if not hours now we SELL A PROPERTY every 13 minutes if we are that bad ask the another thousands of investors who uses us some monthly and we ALWAYS recommend to buy with a general contractor opinion or due diligence is on our contract.Reading your story is just a sad victimization of a poor decision and again we never advertise for the best deals just a deal if you don’t want it let it go and look for another one next day or so ,what for you was terrible for an experienced person not at all , there is always exit strategies BRRR DSCR buy and hold etc  one thing for sure you never loose in real estate maybe you make less and it’s fine onto the next ! 

What they did was hook up with one of the professional seminar producing companies that have fine tuned this crap to be able to hook people wanting a better financial future into spending $40,000 that will most likely never result in any income, let alone change their life’s.People buying these mentorship programs are hoping to be able to cut short the process of education, experience, and capital needed to be successful in this endeavor.  

At the same time, have the washing machine plumbed correctly so you wont have to deal with this headache in the future.You should then go through that house with a fine tooth comb to see if there is any other issues you haven't noticed.

If/when the IRS finds out (and they will), they can fine and penalize you as well as him for failure to report.First thing to do is to check his license status.

Two-prong outlets in a house that originally had two-prong outlets is fine.

@Raj Balakrishnan so if you read the fine print say on smartmove  you will see the states it does not cover.

Depending on where you buy a VRBO/STR could be just fine for a SFR.I am in Seminole and thats another dynamite spot depending on price point but again closer to the beach.