The only time I have seen short sales WITHOUT an arms length agreement would be reverse mortgages, or very random portfolio loans. 

It's easy for random people on BP to tell you to 'go for it' when all they know is what you posted. 

Thank you so much guys really appreciate all the informationidk i think its difficult to gather all the information from all those sourcesits random and not in one place and there are so much data that it may be confusingi wanted to learn from one place and get the info right 

If you find a place that will cash flow at a 200k budget on long term rents in Houston, I promise you that you do not want to own in that neighborhood AND it probably does not actually cash flow due to the class of tenant, capex, vacancy, and turnover costs.I'd suggest you try to find some connection to a place rather than randomly picking a market.

you will likely still have to come out of pocket on your mortgage payment, which is fine.please do not buy a random property thousands of miles away in a market you don't know anything about because someone on the Internet told you to. 

If they randomly review your credit and don't like something...  

Title companies need to insist everyone use a trusted notary, not just any random remote notary, and take additional steps for any remote closings such as holding funds in escrow after any remote closing until they can 100% verify that they’re not going to be wired to a scammer overseas. 

Hard to say for any "random" property when the sample size is so large.

Some were Los Angeles transplants looking for cheap(er) rent and some were just blue collar Craigslist randoms. 

I lived here my whole life and never even thought about wild fire risk.We do get pretty wild and random thunderstorms, hail, and some high wind speeds.