$100 gift card with a 6 month lease?

If it's a gift, you'll just need a gift letter.

As you already know, in a community property state (CA), you two own everything equally (as long as the property was not purchased prior to marriage, or was inherited or gifted to you personally).

Bless you for doing that, it is not always easy to have the roles reversed, we know, but it is such a gift to the kids.  

It certainly can't be in the form of a gift, but what other solutions are there we could utilize to structure things to get around the 5 year minimum?   

(You could be locked out......timing is very important).Some of the items in the file folder include;A skinny contract of sale...... this is a one page written in easy to understand language with only one out clause.A Hybrid contract of sale... a way to close more transactions by joint ventureA commercial contract of sale, 3 pages with special buyer requirements related to environmental conditions, existing suppliers, surveys, buried oil tanks and other conditions that must be known to make a profitable and safe transactionAn option agreementAn informational pocket pack with 52 options to financing and control a building without conventional financingBlank checks, pens, carbon paper, A list of referencesDisclosures for lead paint and other state or federal requirementsCell phone with camera to take pictures of the nice things and negative aspects of the property and to take a picture of the contract to email confirmation to seller and to your title company or lenderA gift, something for the seller to remember you by, I give Indian Head Nickels away, pens, note pads.Blank addendum forms  - these are used to attach to your purchase agreements (you don't want a lot of chicken scratching on your contracts; use them to write some of the following;1.

Back in January I was trying to buy a rental from a family friend with conventional finance but since I got a generous gift from my family I had to wait for it to season.

Luckily I didn't have to go too far, my parents see (some) of the advantages in owning RE, they already own 2 townhouses in MD (outside of DC), that they bought in a cash purchases (that's why I say they only see only some of the advantages in REI).So after talking to them they were willing to allocate a one time $100K amount to help me with this purchase and structure some of it as a gift and some of it as a low interest loan. 

I'd gift them to you if it were possible! 

The plan:    Send out an online survey with $10 Amazon gift card provided upon completion asking things like (still working on these):  "How would you rate the level of service abc property manager is providing when an issue is reported?""