He's using Timberline Natural Shadow Shakewood.

You can back out based on the Transfer Disclosure Statement; the Natural Hazards Report, the Preliminary Report, etc.

She is also recently divorced, she earned a million dollars a year Realtor before the crash in Nevada, her divorce, ex... and the Real Estate bust left her with IRS debt and destroyed credit and she has financial obligations to college kids in the short term (PS - we met and moved in together before I inherited the money and while she was not working dealing with a medical scare- so no gold digging here.)However- we are sensitive to appearances and she insists anything I buy be in my own name and that if anything happened to her I could afford it on my own.

I could replace it with a natural gas one, but I'm concerned about safety issues.

See the following light reading in well versed IRS speak:http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/0345022.pdfCode section 1.103-8(b)(5) in summary says that a residential rental project must be open to the public to be considered residential rental property.Code section 1.103-8(b)(4) states that a residential rental property can not be transient in nature and must meet open to the general public.I won't bore you with all the details.Some interesting situations that come up due to the code.

Naturally this is essentially the same thing as owner financing--just without a price and interest rate defined.This particular house was $695/month and I would guess the investor's cost basis is in the region of $20k.

Peter Conti has written a couple of interesting books, takes big cahoonies to apply these strategies, you can't be "sensitive", this is bare knuckle marketing and in-home harda$$ negotiating with sellers.

Another issue is the business nature of your activities, are you in the business of doing this or that or are you truly investing for youself, is a question you need to address when figuring out if you need a license.

What's the nature of your main gig?

Yes, by the very nature of commercial lending, it is assumed that commerce is conducted by and between business people, a more sophisticated set of participants that allows profits to be gained under different conditions than with the general public.