As you mentioned often they own the land/house next door. 

As someone else mentioned, what I've seen a lot of in the past six months is deals that don't have the rental income to service the debt and borrowers with marginal credit.

I should mention the property is in Winter Park, Colorado near the ski resort.

There's a ton of posts on this site mentioning the use of LLC's.

I'm an active investor in Indiana; I'm in several of the markets you mentioned. 

You mention going on title and taking over the loan - is there an existing mortgage?

I also invest in the Indianapolis metro area and had similar problems to what you mentioned in Ohio.

As you mention the reality is there are very few sellers who will do seller financing and my guess is its probably around 1%.

My allocation I mentioned above is purely what I would do based on my current financial situation.  

IMO, only worth it if you have access to enough capital to scale your efforts, though.Can't be compared.To do well in the lending game, in addition to controlling your risk and what others have mentioned, you need...