The security deposit should never be used for anything during the lease.

He is working on getting this number for me, but they only expect it to be around 60-70k, which I most likely will get a private lender to come up with that money.

At a high level, this is generally the path people take - we see a lot of people have success in this route - start building the portfolio with banks, low down payments, and then **generally** when you hit around 5 or so properties - it starts to make sense to switch over to LLCs, its too hard to qualify/deal with paperwork of banks and switch towards private lenders like DSCR Loans - (LLC friendly, easier) to scale past 5 or so.

You want to make sure that asset is secure.

Are you priced fairly and have a low security deposit?

I would start with all cash and then seek private lending money. 

.: Quote from @Chris Seveney: @James WiseI was sitting next to a doctor at a conference who did a private money loan and lost $$200k then he did a jv deal where he became co-owner of a LLC, gave a personal guarantee on the asset and put money in the deal to buy it but didn’t put a lien on property so partner went and leveraged the assets as well and ran off and dr had personal guarantee.They then bought a property and renovated half of it then decided to knock it down….I had a successful shoulder surgeon ask me to list his apartment building that was under-performing.

Our battery went out and our son had to crawl through a basement window but I doubt too many people could have done that, he was impressed by our increased security but didn't want to drive 2 hours back home so he found a way.  

Would you have any recommendations on how to structure this private money loan that makes sense for the lender?  

Not hard money, not private money.