Use some for buy and hold (I personally would prefer apartments rather than buying a few single family homes) and some for lending/trust deed investing.In either category, you must know what you are doing, know how to vet the investment, how to vet the sponsor (if investing in a larger fund of some sort), the laws and regulations on the lending side, how to investigate which areas to invest in buy and hold and notes/trust deeds for that matter.So as you have already said several times, lots to think about . . . 

My wife drives across town to get her hair done. 

I help all sorts of investors from all over and those in KC find replacement properties.

Digitize physical receipts for easy storage and use a consistent naming convention for easy sorting - 2024.03.25 Home Depot. 3.

This allows you to make an offer without a HI contingency which is much more competitive than one with the contingency since you are buying the property as is.You can still get the home inspection after you settle to capture all of the detail items.Some HI's will not do this, they might see it as some sort of conflict of interest.

That was precisely the sort of site I was hoping for.

High crime is sort of relative and varies from person to person.

I would appreciate it if you could please contact me directly, since I believe that BP rules prohibit posting recommendations of this sort on the website.

If you don't have the cash and have no way to get it quickly I'd focus on sorting out a payment plan with HUD, if they allow that.

Cons are the liquidity event that your parents will have to do to purchase the home (I assume the funds are in some sort of investment today so there's likely some tax ramifications on cashing those securities).