If the value ends up on the high end of the range, that by itself may not be an issue if there are sufficient comps to support it.

Also—and very importantly—the value the mentee brings, has to be sufficiently valuable to the mentor (and if the mentor is a highly experienced and successful RE investor, they ain't gonna come cheap!)

I plan to invest out of town from where I live and plan to have a property manager deal with the day to day of the property and be a proxy between tenants and myself since I already have a full time career.I have enough to go in on a small deal all by myself, I just need to learn to get to from where I am to finding a deal sufficient to invest in.

Currently saving up sufficient funds for my down payment, closing costs, and my personal reserve requirement. 

To find and control a truly good, honest and honorable property management company is not easy and with your lack of RE investment background you don't have sufficient experience or context by which to vet them or control them or to gauge the quality of the properties you will be presented by agents. 

@Terrell Garren @Joe Splitrock so 3-5% of property values for maintenance in a checking account as well a CapEx account with $10-$15K should be sufficient for starting out

Your basic insurance policy with $300,000 in liability coverage should be sufficient in 99.999% of all lawsuits.5.

I could see that if the parents are say 95 and moving into assisted living and have sufficient assets to live on for the rest of their live then providing their heirs with a gift now wouldn’t seem like such a bad idea.  

Maybe the insulation on the 2nd floor and basement is not sufficient?

Thank you that answered my question quite sufficiently.