Have a safe area.

When you are looking for Yield, like everyone else who's option is to give their Money to the Bank at 1%, any greater Return is a good one if it is Safe and under your Control.

We have a similar title requirement in Oklahoma, when you get a tax deed and purchase a property at a tax sale the potential redemption period before you have good marketable title is 7 years according to the state, however First American and other underwriters require 10 years just to be safe before they will issue title insurance on it. 

They wouldn't budge at their price and said if I wanted to negotiate the price more i would need to go into escrow.I nearly walked away from this deal again but decided to give it a go, but just to be safe I made sure I covered my assets ;) My offer was written up for their new asking price and I made sure I wrote in a couple contingencies to back out if needed as well as have the seller pay for an inspection.

Is it safe to invest in a college/university town and potentially rent to college students?

I am just trying to see if there is a safe way to do the deal this way so he can get his feet wet or do I just need to do my own thing here.

Purchase prior to auction, with inspection and title search done is the only way of purchasing that I would consider safe.

@Jon Holdman  excellent synopsis.however i think this person is missing the intent part if the intent was to flip then there you go its inventory and ordinary income.I would think for a safe harbor he would need to keep it a year get it on his schedule C then sell it on terms. its funny how companies dream up these programs.. 

I would have to put a minimum of $15k in that unit to get it up to those rents though and so I chose the path that was more safe/sure thing. 

First, we'll start with building a safe, sustainable community for people with special needs!