and to be clear - no, there is no obvious / effortless / low risk way to put funds into something RE-related with no experience and easily beat savings or CD returns right now.lots of folks thought there was and got burned.getting in right now requires patience and money. 

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We have created a contract that states i have to pay them back within two years via  refi to get it out of their name and into mine. 

I will never buy in lower income areas (Class C)  regardless of state and with the landlord tenant laws in CA, I'm apprehensive if I need to evict a tenant who can't pay rent or causes problems.

I can't speak for this deal in particular, but you'll always pay more for turnkeys-- trade-off for not having to do any work.The only thing I see in the deal is Norada didn't include estimates for vacancy and repairs, and I would never analyze a deal without including those.

G'Day Hughston,The best advice I could give would be to not invest out of state unless you buy turnkey.But that's just me being biased.The second best advice I can give is to focus more on the people that you will be working with over the stats/demographics of a specific area.I'm sure that this has been covered many times in the various BP books but to this day it rings true.You will heavily have to rely on the folks on the ground.They will either make or brake your investment so choose them wisely.If you buy the best house, on the best street, in the best area with the best capital growth projections.But your property manager is incompetent or a cheat.You will loose money.So, team first, area second.Much success

I've learned some hard lessons with tenants, so I'm totally ok with not letting her renew, but also if she's been able to pay rent with unemployment maybe it can work? 

If it's standard for the tenant to pay and the property is submetered then no problem.

Our goals: Obtain another investment property while not having to pay anything for a down payment.I envision that my in-laws would use $250k (equity in current house) as a down payment to get into a new smaller location.

My Father has been renting us a house in OBX every summer since I was a kid and were both pretty affluent now and I'm floating the idea of us going in together on an Oceanfront somewhere in OBX that we can use a few weeks a year and have it pay for itself via rentals the rest of the year.