If the owner is deceased, you'll need to contract with someone who has the capacity, powers and authority to pass (transfer) title.This has little to do with whether the opportunity is potentuslly orofitable or not.

if you have a bleeding heart for low income, bad neighborhood type of renters then more power to you. 

My question lies in the reporting of the income from the guest house rental in efforts to maximize our loan potential for future buying power.  

In the world or REI at this point in the market, the people who have the power are the people who have the deals.  

Word of mouth is powerful, but that definitely seems outside the norm.

Knowledge is power and some of the smartest people I have have come from my real estate endeavors.  

Production builder but they do a very good job w/ JD Power surveys and they stress that a lot with their clients.

They're funded by some of Silicon Valley's largest and most powerful VC's in addition to receiving an add on investment from Google Ventures, Googles internal investment company. 

I tend to stay away from any properties with "compromised" locations - busy street, power lines, commercial adjacent, etc - unless it is a phenomenal deal.  

Pull a permit for new service, cut the wire going to the garage and feed it to a meter base (power co probably has them for free).