Echoing everyone else, also be mindful of how that property will then compare to comps.For example, lets say that you have a three bedroom single family with 1.5 baths, and it is 1.8k square footage.

I felt uncomforable about signing something saying she could record our meetings togther and make recordings of things in my apartment and I told her that I would like to take that one paper with me and have a lawyer look at it if she didn’t mind.

The 2 year buyout was needed to really make this work and give me piece of mind. 

I'd say keep in mind a few things for starters: 1.

Keep in mind I focus mainly on residential lending. 

Real estate professional (for this posts sake) simply makes rental activity active, so you can use the losses there to offset other active income. 

I’d also recommend checking out his Facebook page.. he’s very active on there.

Access to the Multiple Listings Service (MLS)The MLS has a huge inventory of active properties on the market.

The IRS looks to see what tax return reports the activity of the property. 

You need to determine what rate of return you would like to make it worth it for you (while of course keeping in mind what the market rates are in your area for interest rate and points - in the Phila area you can generally expect private loans to be in the 11-14% range and 2-4 points - but there are a lot of factors that go into the rate such as LTV, strength and experience of the borrower, 1st position vs. 2nd position, and so on).