How am I losing money here?     

I drive my car, run over a Nun and 6 school kids, lose and have judgments, and they can't go after my assets, the "stock" interests I have as personal assets in ownership interests? 

Otherwise its just your word against hers and you will lose in court.

In low/no appreciation markets, you want higher cash on cash returns that will offset the lack of appreciation and so you can at least exit the market in 7-10 years if you need to without losing money or you will have been able to save some of the cash flow to make capital improvements and continue to hold the property.Also, you want to buy at a discount so that much of the equity margin you need to avoid selling costs eating up all your aggregate cash flows is captured at purchase (and perhaps some significant gain above that).

The fear of losing your deposit is real for me, that's the reason I give to the local bank when they ask me to bank with them, although it is the same in a sense, but at least when these big banks close, either fed govt kicks in, some bigger bank buys them, or there is a total chaos which brings in more attention than that of a local bank that has only 5 branches.

And if so, are you aware that you may and likely will lose every dollar you put into the place if you are unable to in the end exercise that option?

With family... when you win, you lose. 

You'll be most effective by getting to know the principal, their concerns, expectations, time and other issues, and all players influencing the decisions and affected by any outcome.Suggest you copy and print this post,

Whatever you do, just make sure you don't lose any money.

But for like immediate cash flow type of passive income, you won't get it in those areas.Notes and all that work, but they aren't properties in the areas you mentioned, plus you lose out on a lot of passive income with notes that you would get with owning real property.