To answer the question...downside of Craigslist is that you may get people from Nigeria trying to scam you.

Is this just s scam to get your $1,000?

What I have discovered is that any guru or company coming out of Utah, concerning real estate or investing, has a significantly better chance of being a scam then coming from other states.

Even though that guy or even some on here who have read your post may be viewing you as a "sucker" does not mean that you are a "sucker" for being kind hearted and want to help someone..people are just too stupid to recognize a blessing because its so rare these days for people to put a total stranger before themselves.By the way, people are being scammed this very minute by people stealing money right out of their pockets right in front of their eyes; your situation was just dealing with a homeless person who needed someone to help him.

Now I'm not trying to do anything illegal or scam-like, I basically want to know can this strategy work for someone who has little to no money for anything dealing with real estate (down payments, monthly payments, etc.).

This deal looks like a scam.

I want to make my approach as comfortable as possible, this way people will not be turned down because they feel it is a scam.

I won't be moving into it, and using that rule was a scam that was overly abused by landlords so new legislation just passed requiring the landlord or family to live there for 12 months.

You were not duped, scammed, lied to, or anything of the sort, and your attitude is a piss poor way of getting people to share information with you.

Something about these signs...maybe the insane promises of starting out making $10,000 a week, or just the sheer volume of signs out there makes me feel like this is a scam.