Question: Should we rent this house(2nd home), which has offers for $820k off-market to sell, or rent for $5k, which also has interested parties? 

For a hands off investor its just a claim and another service ticket to be outsourced.Go over your declaration page you will have lots of decisions to make.  

For rental property, yes you can write off insurance and a portion of interest in the year they are paid 

Thanks @Jeremy Taggart and @Nicholas L. if I get off work in time I'll make the drive down and check it out!

If it were one-off's here and there I'd think it was just someone who had paid off a large part of the house and was just losing it but it happens frequently.

I'm searching for ways to acquire off market properties since there is so much competition with listings on the MLS.

Well if you're looking for a decent off market deal you can go to digonline.org it's for Diversified Investors Group they usually have some pretty good off market rental deals in Philadelphia & let us know what areas you're looking to get one in.We can help you buy an investment property as well.

Betson,You are probably better off using a DSCR program to take the cash out at 75% LTV. 

And you tell him he's scaring you and your wife and to knock it off?

What I do for my off-market deals is scrape the tax record for all LLC's that bought like-property purchases and then trace their name/number and establish relationships with them and bring them deals.