Whenever I have open houses on large properties or absolutely must meet a client for the first time, outside of the office (usually due to a disability or rural location), I'd typically bring  my husband along.

I don't have any good experience with large banks / institutions for investment properties so i always work with local small lenders.I typically first find a new property, then do the closing and refinancing at the same time.

The 20% is the conventional # typically used on commercial or investment properties. 

I'm assuming you plan to self-manage, however if you consider the future you may not always want to self-manage so it's a good idea to factor in management fees when looking at properties (typically I use 10% as a management fee amount).If I use $285k purchase price with 4.990% rate and 20% down, income of $1981/month, expenses of $250/month, property taxes of $3,100/year (per your calc), insurance of $150/month, vacancy of 8%, R&M of 7%, CapX of 10% and management of 10% then I calculate you'd be a negative $593.76/month in cashflow.

With that said fires are a big pain in the *** and take some time to coordinate, they typically take 20 percent or some crazy amount.

Is that a typical scam or is there a tax benefit?

I'm curious if people are typically using operating (no capex reserves) or free (with capex reserves) cash-on-cash returns when evaluating deals as it relates to the 10-13% cash-on-cash minimum that many target.

I also agree with @Jeff Schechter - get on a plane and go see the operation, meet the team, see the neighborhood, and the typical property type they are selling.

That should be spelled out before money changing hands.It doesn't sound like he is a typical fly by night grab the money and go type, as he has done 4 projects with you.

looks like a typical push pier/pin pile with a grouted core.