Consider house hacking when rates and prices are a little more balanced with reality.I would prefer a duplex/triplex but I know getting into a single family home and renting out the rooms is more accessible .

., preferably with a great outdoor space.

Towards the end of the year I was down to my last couple of grand until I had finally seen the results of my prospecting throughout the year.

We have been talking about investing in real estate for a couple of years.

However if you have enough reserves, 6mo or greater then I'd say chance it but a couple of missed payments from the tenants and you have to foot the payments out of your own pocket.I'm all for taking risks but I think you really need to evaluate the age of the major systems so you don't get hit with a bunch of cap ex all at once as well as your reserves. 

Alternatively, your in-laws could partially gift the property by using the annual gift tax exclusion ($34K per couple annually), lowering the sale price and their taxable gain.

A couple great co-living options is STR by the room, Student housing, sober living, Senior care... 

Gita,At least the way I prefer to do things is to only run accrual based accounting activity on my day to day operations.

I have been listening to BiggerPockets for a couple of months now and have been doing my own research over the past several months as well.

This is something that I have really come to realize over the last couple of months as I've been learning.I came into this expecting it to be complicated, and I am not disappointed!