I am looking to invest where I live right now (in Houston) but many of the rental listings I see on the MLS have sat vacant for 100+ days, with some even sitting for over hundreds of days!

I know no one in my family who owns rentals, and none of my friends do either besides those I see at real estate meetups.If you could find some actual statistical evidence to back it up, then maybe, but what your family is doing doesn’t meet that criteria.You could own a hundred properties but that also doesn’t mean history is repeating itself.

Would you loan someone a couple hundred thousand dollars at 5% amortized over 30 years?

One thing I have learned over the years filling hundreds of units is to not give prospective tenants a second thought until they actually apply. 

All it takes is a few hundred dollars and an aggressive first year attorney to make your life a living hell if a seller is harmed and they can prove you had neither the ability or desire to perform under the contract.

CA  NM AZ FL there are millions of these parcelswhat happens is someone buys them.. then realizes there is zero market for them  lets them go to tax sales  A land Geek student buys them for couple hundred bucks and trys to sell them to the next buy for 1000 to 2k usually on terms and some really hammer the Chinese buyers on these especially high desert CA.. 

Where there is a fee, it is minimal and only a hundred dollars or so.

I believe its only a few hundred. 

I've listened to a couple hundred myself and just finished David Greene's latest Buy Rehab Rent Refinance audiobook. 

in the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands...