I love my current renter, and she has been with me for quite some time.Many of these professionals fall in love with the region and end up staying long term.

Kevin and the fund will buy the home and lease it to the buyer until their credit has been sufficiently repaired that they can then buy the house from the fund.This almost seems to fall into the too good to be true pile.How can we ensure that we are not getting involved in some scam that is just there to collects folks' $250 and financial information?

It's easy to fall prey to the fear and greed in the real estate market or financial markets in general. 

It falls under theft of service within the state, and so would generally be considered theft in general. 

Keep it up and everything else will fall into place.

Lauderdale since 2010, when great deals were falling off trees....not so much now!

Preferably, I would like to do a flip in which I purchase the property this fall and fix it up during the mean time to put it on the market during the spring when the market heats up. 

Even though an all cash offer is lower it screams CERTAINTY OF CLOSE versus the risk of underwriting a borrower for a loan and the deal falls apart.It depends on how long you want to wait before you can refi out if that strategy works for you or not.What is your particular strategy for buying the smaller rental houses versus other assets classes if you have that kind of capital to work with??

At a given point in all areas the returns fall off as several people have pointed out to you above.

Congrats on the triplex as it's a nice place to fall into, and you're obviously already ahead of the rookies. :) I've also been listening for a few months and a 1-hour commute to work allows for quite a bit of listening an educating.