And I am going to check with the planning dept to verify it is a "legal" 3-4 bedroom house.

It’s all verified by trained invest agents.

Also - if anyone has rental properties in this general vicinity who can provide insight / verify my assertion that its not a war-zone I’d appreciate it !

I find it backwards that they would place a tenant before verifying what amount that HUD would pay.

Do I need to verify if its a brother or a friend or it doesn't matter?

I bought a property (apartment in a building) with a tenant in place and planned to wait for him to leave and put an AirB&B, but the HOA said that the minimum lease time should be 1 whole month and that they (the HOA) had to verify and approve each tenant.

Please take this the right way, but you are still ASSuming things instead of verifying.

I just want to verify whether you meant to say appraisal or inspection on this particular part of your post. 

Have you verified that?

Title companies need to insist everyone use a trusted notary, not just any random remote notary, and take additional steps for any remote closings such as holding funds in escrow after any remote closing until they can 100% verify that they’re not going to be wired to a scammer overseas.