I sold insurance door-to-door in lowell 2008-2010 and did extremely well.

Stated income, no document loans. 

I found the documents listed in this thread very helpful: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/107...

If you are going to invest out of state for your first deal, you might as well invest in sure stock tips.  

We can also understand a div stock will not need a roof or have any ongoing turnover costs, vacancies, evictions, vandalism, code violations, insurance claims, sewer lines, landscaping blah, blah blah.Fortunately we can compare 5 years div stocks to 5 years random sfr returns and your friends blog conclusions are not debatable.

I strongly suspect that in many scenarios, you will end up out of pocket MORE than $300 a month once you add in taxes, insurance, maintenance, and utilities. 

Everything above documented and recorded in public record... 

Discuss between the two of you and flesh out the agreement on the document. 

Also my insurance agent says it's harder for him to get insurance from good companies on old older homes, unless the electrical, roof, and plumbing and have been updated. 

I also have sewer & water line insurance provided by DEP via American Water Resources (AWR) but every time I call them, they say there has to be a clog and all they will take care of will be fixing the clog.