Benefits for me: I own the property in 5 years, free and clear, only having to pay off property taxes and making some repairs--by that time I'm predicting the neighborhood will have appreciated quite a bitBenefits for the seller & caretaker: outstanding tax debt is washed away, a huge weight is lifted off their shoulders, and they can continue living in the house for another minimum 5 years without having to pay a dimeI'm still quite the noob at the whole REI game, and it sounds really weird but it seems like a win-win for both of us.  

Re: Also, when we did the rebuild on my home, we used a local general contractor who used a manager, and she was worth her weight in gold.  

We couldn't refi for holds and retail buyers for our properties were starting to have trouble getting loans meaning that our properties that were finished and ready to go sat as dead weight while we were trying to liquidate.Our $100-200/month cash flow on our stable properties couldn't support the debt service on the vacant/unfinished properties for very long and we ate through our reserves pretty quickly while fire-saling everything to make our private money whole.The 20/20 hindsight is that we sold our best properties early because we thought we could weather it out with enough cash and prices weren't really dropping.  

This is much easier than attempting to compute the weighted average of an underlying mortgage and the amount of equity financed. 

Being that you don't know him that well - the potential of $3k in profit does not out weight the risk of injecting $10k into this deal. 

Quick answer is...When ever doing something with someone else… Outline clearly what each person’s responsibilities are… Most if not all problems that arise will come from disagreements or one party “not pulling their weight”…Also, make a giant to do list… then assign “who” and what “time frame” the items are to be completed.

It's possible the appraiser could weight the value indicated by the income approach more, but I typically see appraisers putting more weight on the sales comparison approach regardless of what approaches were developed.

It may lend weight to other arguments but that fact alone should not be enough.

Its like me paying for you to go to a weight loss clinic. 

An ounce of prevention is worth it's weight in gold!