I would investigate this further.

The owner still doesn't know that my dad and mom has recently moved to Florida for retirement.Need some guidance here folks.If I give up on this place without doing a good investigation of it I will be losing out on being literally on the inside track or the ground floor of.....not a wonderful opportunity but an opportunity.  

This is a great place to learn and further investigate investing in real estate.

Investigating complaints is their job.

Right now I am only looking at MLS.I am choosing those areas because a friend of a friend have invested in Bend and my husband regularly does business trips to Houston.Are there other out of state investing that may be worth investigating?

The term is 6 months so your $50k can be loaned out twice per year at 12%, plus the 1 point times two points total you get, making your total annual return 14% and other than the original investigation into the subject property (which you would have to do on a buy and hold anyways), you are 100% passive with no IRS rules to worry about other than not loaning to a disqualified party.This is a very simple example and as a matter of fact, if you mix in some JV deals or situations where you take a portion of profits, your returns can get even higher.

I did see another property online in nearby Finneytown that I'm going to investigate. 4 plex asking 144,900 with gross income at 31200.

Based on that, the "gift tax" is something to investigate.

Unfortunately, there isn't a black and white answer to this; there are a few different variables so you kinda just have to investigate each situation separately.

I've been ignoring most of them, because when I do investigate, the story is invariably fishy.