I do hope to get a few sage words of advice from experienced investors (like you) so I can maybe find an upside from a terrible situation.Thank you for your questions,Allen Fletcher  

They were terribly inaccurate in their home prices 4 years ago, and now they are getting better. 

And like all parts of your team there are good ones and not-so-good ones and downright terrible ones.

Unfortunately all it takes is getting the wrong people involved and you could end up having houses in terrible areas.

Originally posted by @Tiffany Ward: offer 12 times market rent for an annual payment, Eg thousand dollars times 12 or $12,000 take the $12,000 divided by the equity involved say $144,000 That would be approximately 12 years  of paymentsResearch "imputed interest" and charge the minimum interest possibleMost realtors are terrible at explaining seller financing

not terrible, I'd add principal so it's paid off after the 5 years and maybe shop around with some other local banks commercial lending department

I feel like if I purchase 10 properties over 2-3 years, 6 would be good experiences, 2 would be home runs and the remainder would be terrible experiences.

Craigslist is pretty dependable in some cities and terrible in others.

The only way you would see it is if there was a sale to a real person you would see a deed recorded at the county when they close in 6-8 weeks.What I've been seeing a lot of recently is that it was auction.com bidding on behalf of the seller and you'll see it up for auction again in a few days.May be just my area.I've been watching them try to sell some particularly terrible properties this way for 6 months plus.

We can go into detail why but lets just assume you take my word for it.now if your friend has a well established business he is moving over an already successful business it's might be less risk, but even then the business model of a gym is designed that without regular, LARGE capital investments, the membership pool vacates. now if you ignore all that and still want to proceed:doing business with friends is usually not a good idea, adding to that a business with a low likelihood of success = terrible idea!