Now he needs to participate in the payout to investors who lost money when the properties they bought through GEG were never renovated, even after they paid for those renovations.I will be contacting the SEC and FTC so they can take care of it.

We've never had any issues whenever we submitted a claim, and they would take care of the type of situation you're dealing with.  

If you don't have money set aside for emergencies then you should tread carefully.

With careful planning and local insights, Richmond can be a solid addition to your investment portfolio.Good luck!

@Marcus Stokes Starting your first fix-and-flip can be exciting but requires careful planning.

However, the biggest con is that you are sacrificing a bit of your privacy by living right by your tenants and it is usually a lot more stressful since everything is your responsibility - managing tenant issues, handyman repairs, taking care of the lawn, etc.I would strongly recommend house hacking especially in the Columbus Ohio market!

There i a bit of research that needs to be completed early on in order to get a good judgement on the feasibility of this; from there, the "Official" way to ensure you could pursue this would be to request a "Zoning Opinion Letter" to receive an Official decision from the Department of Zoning in order to ensure this will not cause any issues during your permit review. 

You can easily look them up on https://nmlsconsumeraccess.org/If they are a commercial lender, you may want to check for google reviews

However, the best way to get a feel for rental rates compared to values is to review/underwrite properties in the area - only after reviewing/underwriting many will you begin to see a pattern.

They are billed as "a scientific approach to single-family rentals" and use "institutional grade property management," which usually means they are a tech company in real estate and likely either don't have the existing property management relationships in each area or you chose an area where they don't have enough units through Roofstock for the PM they chose to care.