If I do keep the home, I want it to provide income forever.  

Your consumer mortgage products will never allow your land trust to be the borrower.  

Sacramento can not appreciate like this forever so on your next purchase you should look at the numbers very closely.

Hey @Mindy Jensen,Here are some criteria which comes from a landlord's perspective (who has a Land banking mentality):1) Area with tenants where you feel confident to manage them (can different from person to person, some are good with dealing with A-class tenants, some are better at dealing with C-D class)2) All things equal, the closer to where you live, the better.3) With sustainable cashflow (ie. land banking requires waiting, so if you can sustain the houses (at least break even plus some buffer), then you can at least keep the house forever).  

Well, somebody concerned about ROI will shop for the lowest cost insurance that they can find - so what makes you think that you will be the insurance agent this friend uses forever?

I would offer to do it at a reduced rate, of course (hopefully not for free forever at least).Mainly, I want to learn from an experienced investor and make a little money to build my capital for my own investing (and pay off debt to be honest).  

I live in NH, where the prelicensing classes to become an agent are inexpensive ($350) and not time consuming (40 hours).

I agree, Zillow has been getting me on a lot of dead ends...also very time consuming!

Costs, I don't suggest you do this as a DIY deal, get an attorney, the borrowers can pay the costs of the attorney and the filing fees and settlement costs and the title search, meaning you need to get to a title company, they will tell you what the costs will be.Next, never, never, never use a pre-arranged deed to be held in escrow, in any state, for any commercial or consumer mortgage.

If, on the other hand, this is all too difficult or time consuming and you want an easy way to invest then seek out quality partnerships or joint ventures with people right here on BP.