If you plan to move to a new property soon and secure a mortgage as an owner-occupant on your current home you may be committing mortgage fraud, @Ron Singh.

Eliminating the risk of fraud in our business dealings with others is clearly something that we need to continually be very mindful of.  

It's those maniacs that buy homes cash via quit claim deed off of craigslist that really get screwed.Make sure your property manager is a licensed real estate brokerage.Google Clayton Morris Scam and/or Morris Invest Fraud for a cautionary tale of what not to do when buying turnkey real estateUnderstand you can not eliminate all risk, only mitigate it.

Think of the terms "buyer's market" and "seller's market" identically to when you are thinking about the underlying real estate itself -- does the home have 40 offers all over asking (seller's market), or just 3 offers and all 3 are lowball (buyer's market)? 

They could report you to criminal law enforcement for mortgage fraud.

If you buy as an Owner Occupied then you must agree to live there as your primary residence for 1 year prior to making it a rental, if you don't owner occupy it for 1 year, you have just committed loan fraud and if the lender becomes aware of this, they may report it to legal authorities?

I just dealt with an almost identical transaction the other day (sibling in prison included) and the property had a bunch of tax liens on it making it worthless once the liens were paid off.

Neighbor sold two days ago, identical layout for $539k.

These properties are literally down the street from each other and are almost identical except for square footage.

If they also have a picture of your driver license - that's all they need to steal your identity ....