Now, I understand he has to work and is in the middle of buying his own house, but as far as I'm concerned if you want to be included in this stuff then you need to pick up the phone. 

Your basis determines gain.

If the lender determines that a transfer was made, they have the right to call your loan due.

Leverage their knowledge to determine if you could afford this property if you sold your existing rentals (that likely are cash flow negative as a set). 

(my post is based off the assumption of you knowing how to analyze a deal to see if it's a good one or not) The first move is to determine if you want to be hands on and actively managing a deal and the day to day of it or do you want to passively invest in someone else's bigger deal? 

I usually pick up a $100 fan/light combo (modern looking of course) from Home Depot or you find deals online

From that I determined that debt to income ratio of 2.61 that is my every dollar of expense I had 2.61 dollars coming in to service that expense.

I'm not sure how much that matters.In terms of the "fly in ointment" part, they are in fact "renting" to us but whether it's at fair market value or not I'm entirely sure... how would you determine that?

You’ll li,rly have to pay new plumbers to run a camera and make their own determination.

@Rob Brown Your asset allocation should be determined by your personal financial situation.