It is a very dangerous game to be playing with your member's tithes.

NPN seconds  are a niche that one needs to do as an advanced strategy and have scale.. sandwich lease options like your talking about are frankly fraught with danger and are guru pitchs and coachs who try to sell this stuff so they can sell their coaching.. remember you have all these folks who have small capital and what ever reason they think they should somehow put it into real estate.. when in my mind many would do far better looking to create a business that makes them some real money not just a few hundred a month on the delta while risking cash and taking on massive debt or worse buying sub too and getting a seller all twisted up because you don't have the money to execute.

These are companies that are well-capitalized and approaching liquidity events, and even still, they can't attract young engineering talent because they aren't located where all the 20-somethings want to live.Over the next few years, as some of these SF startups come to see their liquidity events, there are going to be a lot of rich kids looking for local real estate, and this will likely prop up SF prices for a the next few years (barring any major downturn in the tech sector overall).On the other hand, the larger tech companies are starting to expand in the south bay, are mostly hiring older folks (30-50 years old) who are more settled, already own a house (if they're going to), and there are many fewer liquidity events in the south bay than in years past.  

depending on the state unrecorded land contracts are treated just like Deeds of trust  only worse you have to judicial foreclose them.I suggest you spend a little money on a local RE attorney there in your state.. internet is a dangerous place to look for these types of answers.. as they will vary wildly as these things are state specific.good luck with it...

Not to mention the danger of you getting half way done ripping everything out then defaulting... which is a real danger. and leaving them with a gutted house ... and worse off than when they started... owner financing a rehab is not the brightest move for a seller.I get the buy low sell high and I agree we all do it..  

Note that I'm not a CPA, but know just enough about accounting to be dangerous

You would be treading dangerous water if you started running your analysis based on say appraised value plus $X or X% or some other valuation tool.

Or a dangerous one?

Actually in many parts of Florida... you will have fewer tenants in the summer because many folks show up with the snowbirds in Jan. or Feb.

This can be a dangerous strategy if you're not paying cash for the houses.