You always have to be careful when doing business with family.

Lawn: if it's in a HOA and you care about maintaining the look of the exterior, owner should take care of lawn.

If you are new and out-of-state, you are behind the 8-ball for sure and need to be very careful.

It can also work if you're planning to do an option, assignment, or double closing, because you're not taking on the risk of holding the property for an extended period, but if things continue slowing down (thank you, high interest rates), you'll want to be very careful about how much you're offering, especially if you stick to the straight flipping model, where you take title to the property and don't make any improvements to force appreciation.

Corporate formalities are taken care of and minimal as a single member LLC.

I know there are some people out there who do this and put an assignment in place to be recorded if the loan defaults.As with so many things in REI, there are multiple ways to skin the cat, and it has a lot to do with your level of risk and your partial investor's level of risk.I do teach a 4 hour live class on this. 

I feel the deposit is a good thing because it incentives the tenant to take care of the property.

Potential residents can tell if the owner/operator authentically cares about providing that A+ experience, and they will vote with their wallet regarding where they stay.So going back to my original sentence, here is where my grace runs out.

What about the care of the home?

I also suspect the seller's friend rented the other unit because the rent is cheap and the landlord is a pushover.I would look at this entire situation carefully.