Any discussion without the facts is merely achademic.You stand to receive a big gift so you would be foolish to not risk a few hundred dollars for a title report.

At least when I've made and used them, they were never intended to be seen as alternatives to or competitors with the big guys; they were merely a tool to help my listings stand out among the huge sea of properties these giants have us all swimming in.

To be a broker is to either be an intermediary between two parties, or to be the agent of one of the parties.To wholesale a property is to represent only yourself as a buyer or seller.Realtors argue that wholesalers never intend to purchase the property themselves, therefore they are merely disguising their brokering activities.If a wholesaler's to complete the purchase, and then turn around and sell the property, no one would say this was a brokerage activity.If the wholesaler where to use a simultaneous closing to buy and sell, few would consider this brokering.It is when wholesalers put a property under contract with no intent to close the transaction themselves, only to assign the contract to someone else for a profit, and to back out should they not be able to find a buyer, that people believe that this begins to look more like brokering than investing.Since it would require meeting a difficult burden of proof for a prosecuter to successfully prosecute a wholesaler for brokering without a license, and because the resulting penalties for conviction are so light, and because a direct "victim" is hard to find, that most wholesalers will never be bothered by the legal authorities, even if they live in a state where the real estate commission considers wholesaling to be brokering.

Here's merely my opinion:My strategy is fairly straight forward: Buy right, and hold forever.It's worth mentioning that the Buy right portion is the most critical.  

It seems that as long as a "wholesaler" has placed a deposit "substantial consideration" when getting the property under contract and then merely marketed the contract to other known investors he will be ok.

Beside the ban on general solicitation and advertising, the rule provided that you had a prior relation with any investor.In 2014, Under the JOBS Act, the SEC modified Rule 506 to include a part C which allows general solicitation and advertising if all investors are accredited investors and you or a third party have vetted them as accredited rather than merely accepting their written statement.What makes 504, 505, and 506 offerings somewhat costly is that although it is an exemption from registration, it is not an exemption from filing notification documents with the SEC and with various state agencies in those states in which your investors reside, nor is it an exemption from providing those investors with informational documentation spelling out in detail all aspects of the offering, risks, experience, contingency plans, voting rights, etc.

Yes, all FHA loans (203K is merely a subset) allow for non-occupying co-borrower and the LTV does not change; meaning your down payment is still 3.5%.

You are correct that these "rules" are merely shortcut tools used to assess a property's potential before digging into the details. 

Reading more about self-directed IRAs, I now have some questions that I can't seem to find answers to.1) I am the 'primary' investor and I own the LLCs used to purchase the real estate and his IRA would merely provide funding to the LLC through a partnership agreement between us.

We purchased the property last year, so this will be the first year.My father's stake in the investment is merely the capital he will receive when we sell it.