All units are occupied and in great condition Separate utilities , Tenants pay heat , cooking gas and electric Owner does current managementHere is the very simplified income/expense report from the owner:Now property number two is a 12 unit building.  

Also keep in mind that you can look up the property on the cook county recorder of deeds, which will show any instrument recorded against the property.  

2) As a second alternative I suppose since this contractor would be no relation to me at all I could loan him the money from my SDIRA for purchase and rehab but structure the loan paper to share profits in some way upon sale again 80/20 for examle?  

In Cook County Illinois.Can I do this?

@Tony Cook welcome to BP.

I have a few clients that call me at least 2-3/mos just to tell me about a home they drove by that needs a ton of work or one that has some fire damage or heard a friend saying their neighbor is about to loose their house.  

Nothing on the mls is working for me at the moment.

Aaron Fox My tax guy tells me an LLC but more important is how you treat the taxation of the LLC which he tells me at the end of the year how we are treating it.

You lost me at "War Zones" 😳

Most are cheap enough that we can leave plenty of meat on the bone, making our buyers pretty happy folks.