Don't wait for the insurance adjuster to come out to stop further damage to the property.

Hi,My tenant just moved out after doing some minor damage in the property and I am going to refund her security deposit.

I just became aware of a situation where a family friend and her mother have offered to short sale their home with no regard to loss of their initial $20K down payment and damage on their credit due to the fact that they're up in age (one is over 100 years old) and they see no other recourse.How can I advise them of a different strategy to resist the temptation to give away what is essentially a really nice home that needs minimal TLC in the Oviedo FL area?

Most of my DILs have not included a cash for keys element, but it can be helpful in some situations.

@Gary Freidman all good points above.The only "good" thing I see about this opportunity is it was built in 1958 not 1900 like most or our duplexe's here are.Other than that, I would highly suggest you pass [for now] and stick with solid SFH 3/1-up projects until you get a better feel of the city.I've mentioned before, that I had several of these at one point and yes, they are VERY sexy on paper until reality hits about 3-6 months after you buy it and realize that the vacancy is very high, it's been vandalized 3 times and the tenants you did final get to move in ended up doing $5k in damage in just 6 weeks before you had to evict them [true story].I work with a lot of investors like yourself that jump in early into a project like this that end up getting burned and it leaves our industry with a black eye.I hope that helps.Feel free to PM with any specific questions that I may assist you with.

Replacement Cost polices are helpful in the case of older items being damaged as they pay to replace those items with brand new items instead of paying you to replace the items in a used like-condition.3.

He said that was what he is doing at his place.Something else he said was in a rental, or anywhere for that matter, a deck will start looking bad really quickly; even composite can be damaged.

AND RATES - rates can only get so high before the rate level slows the economy and then later slows the economy to a degree that significant damage to the economy occurs.

@Mark Schneider, Tacking multiple parties is not hard in theory, each person's period of possession is added to the next possessor's, -but proving all the elements of adverse possession for each party gets tricky.  

If the buyer defaults or causes damage, you need to be a named insured on the policy.Your insurance agent should be able to make this happen - Mark