From what I can tell the "interest"in the property comes in the form of my lack of initial equity.  

My excuse was not having the initial capital saved up, and no knowledge of hard money, private lending, nor using equity in my homesteaded property. 

I can see this described as RTO to the seller as a reference initially because it's easy for them to understand, but not an actual operator.  

@Austin Steed In addition to COREE, if you want to connect with other investors, there is a FREE landlording meeting this Thursday, May 26th, at Tommy's Pizza on Dublin-Granville (between Sawmill and Riverside) that features education (a Q&A session geared to newbies for general real estate investing and landlording as well as a featured speaker) and networking and has a good mix of newbies and experienced investors.

This is a viable path if you can assume the initial risk.

I've heard on multiple podcasts of taking a hard money loan on a 5 month term and then refinancing with a bank for the ARV value in order to pay off the initial loan.

If you are not buying until within the next year then I do not know why this agent is showing you properties.That is nothing more than a site seeing tour and all the properties you look at if worth anything will be gone by then.Seems like just meeting up with a local investor and going to lunch and driving around for initial area review would make more sense.When an investor says they are thinking of doing something next year so many things can happen between now and then that it becomes a probable long shot based on time alone.

So I don't know where the initial owners are (there were 3 of them- from their names appeared to be extended family from Vietnam), but they are the ones that signed the disclosure form.

Total cost from initial consult with IPO consultation to Lights on...approx

We liquidated two, got all our initial investment back, and have three reperforming notes left with a relatively high UPB, on which we plan to collect the entire amount.