Consider future precautions: To avoid similar situations in the future, you may want to consider taking precautions such as screening tenants more carefully, having a clear and detailed lease agreement, and having a plan in place for handling nonpayment of rent or eviction.Additionally, if you don't want to go through all the stringent legal actions, you could just try Airbnb for a short amount of time to recover the lost funds, and then go back to renting to tenants.

Any suggestion/information/precautions as to what to look for in that particular area, information/recommendation to Realtor, property management, insurance agents etc is greatly appreciated!  

I agree with @David Gardner precaution to not agreeing to pay a 50% deposit either way.  

I simply stated about REP just as a precaution as I fix A LOT of returns with that issue.

Although I know I can wholesale without making an LLC, should I go ahead and do it now as an extra safety precaution?

If you just want to invest --then you can get lot of info from County court house-- such as Owner finance --- contact them and offer to buy note-- Its a numbers game - Like anything else --there is a learning curve and precautions to be taken -- I have sold several notes as a Broker includinga gas station business note - and made good money I had quit --but now I am getting back into it as well as wholesaling .

If you don't want to learn and take the precautions a prudent lender would, might be better off placing your money with those that do. 

I started with my first property under a company for this reason, sure the odds of something happening go up with more units, but I wouldn't want to get caught by surprise because I only had one unit and didn't take precautions.

Definitely worth the extra precaution and adding more than I have allowed.CP- thanks much your definition; made it much clearer.

Here is the situation.I am new to this and have done my homework for weeks now on all the do's, don'ts and all the necessary precautions.