Sales to immediate family are certainly suspect to hiding assets and tax matters.

As soon as you catch them in a lie reject their application.Sob stories regarding why they need to rent quickly or how their last landlord was terrible are usually also easy giveaways.They are not too difficult to discover as almost everything they say or put on their application will be a lie in a attempt to hide their "I know my rights attitude"."

This is why the outlaw wholesalers hide in the shadows, put little contact info in their ad, and try to hide their identities.

If the owner isn't willing to provide a P&L either he's hiding something (from you, the IRS, who knows) or his bookkeeping is such a mess that he has no P&L.

Those who are trying to hide the connections between themselves and their assets (and those who have done so successfully against litigation) aren't going to blab about it on a public forum. 

Especially since the house was damaged by a hurricane it might be a little hard to hide it too because sometimes the town may drive through neighborhoods to see what work is going on.

They didn’t like it because it wasn’t really a legitimate work-around, they called it a more creative way of hiding the deed transfer.

Also, as I said earlier, I hide some deposit fees in my rent to help out tenants who do not have the money right now.

It may hide imperfections but the first time you have to scrub anything off of your wall, the paint will come off with it.  

I get the feeling the owner is desperate, but trying to hide it.