The house is listed at 670,000 - but I know the owner - her husband passed recently

[Amie Wassell]

Here are the details of the house
Between Sac and SF
- 4/3 one bedroom downstairs
- lot is pretty big for our area at 8400.
- 2000 SQFT 2 story home
- built in 1995
- current owner bought it for 350,000 in 2002
- currently listed for 670,000
- on a court (very desirable neighborhood)
- 71 days on the market
- very low maintenance lot
- turn key
- listed 75 days (she dropped the price 10k at the beginning of the month)

I literally just got an LLC this week so starting to really start to look and I was chatting with a childhood friend on Facebook and she wants to move back to Dallas where her daughter lives (where I am originally from, I am now 5 miles from her current home)
Her husband passed away 2 years ago and kids are grown. 

There is an agent listing the property. I'm trying to figure out a good option, and if I can figure out if renting the property would even make a profit. It's way out of the initial price I was thinking but being I know her personally and I know this location well but not the market as I'm new to all of the creative financing and real estate. I have 2 chapters left in Brandon's book Investing in Real Estate. 

What would be a good way to approach this? A MLO? Thank you, sorry for my ignorance I didn't expect to a possible option to come up. 

[Adam Christopher Zaleski]

What is your advantage for knowing the owner? I don't see one. 

If a family can buy the house for $670,000 and get a 536K loan (20% down payment) at 6.2%, their payment is $3283 (PI) + $625 (taxes) + $142 (insurance) = $4,100/month. Based on this payment to own, the most a family would pay to rent this place would be $5,000/month, in my opinion. 

If zoning allows, you could charge more per month as a short-term or mid-term rental. However, you need the demand to be high enough to have very little vacancy in between tenants. If you could buy the existing furniture at a discount, the number could work best as a medium term rental.