Make sure you investigate and understand the local rental market, as (generally speaking) rural areas have smaller populations, fewer renters, and lower appreciation.

Link to the details.I also suggest investigating cutting your water usage by using drought-tolerant landscaping.

He later moved to Citigroup and tried to do the same there, but was quickly fired after an internal investigation which uncovered his actions.

I guess if the holding cost make sense financially that could be a good option to investigate.

Welcome, Jacob.An LLC may be useful but certainly do not spend too many resources investigating that at the detriment of actually getting out there and getting in the game. 

Back of napkin, I'd put this at a $800-$1000 loss each month.It is a lousy flip as well.Walk away from this deal, there is nothing worth investigating here.  

It's worth investigating the offer but a wise man once told me "if something looks to good to be true it probably is."

What you need to do is a thorough investigation of each of the units yourself and base your desicion on what you find.The other problem that you have is that if you are new to this, you have no idea what you're meant to be looking at.

if you have the owners name Google skip tracer and use a service just like investigators do

Small business located where you are investigating.