The existing rents can have minor variations based on the quality of the property and updates it has.

I had limited success for a three day trial period using Connected Investors PiN tool.

I would also consider an Air B and B if you are going to go this route and again by trial and error figure out which is the best return and which you like doing. 

Wow just my luck that this thread is active: Trying to skiptrace and I've started my free trial with Ancestry but it is not as intuitive as I guessed it would be.

You'll learn by trial by fire.

However, looks like you're missing the part where the homeowner (seller) gets a piece of that option fee, and what you're talking about is a variation from a traditional lease option, so you'll need to do things a little bit different to account for those variations.Look at it this way - if I'm going to offer you (tenant / Leasee) a 2 yr lease option at 200k:Leasee is going to make a down payment of $20k  (this can be whatever you negotiate).Principal is now $180kMonthly rent payments of $1,300 for 2 years.  

There are plenty of realtors online but I don't want to go trial-and-error route, especially given the history of my past conversations...Many thanks in advance!

I read online that he is going to trial at the end of September.

-You can lease option from the seller and assign the deal for 3 to 5% feeYou can do a sandwich lease-option, stay in the middle and sublease and sub optionThis variations on the sandwich where you can do an equity split where you perhaps help the seller get a part of your back end profitSometimes you can do a reverse assignment where you lease option from the seller, you sublease and sub option, and then you assign or sell your option to purchase directly back to the seller for a note to be paid when the tenant buyer buys it from the original seller (for rookies I know that's a little confusing)Then there's master leasing is where you'll just take over to the tenant leases and take over subleasing to a group of tenants, for differences in cash flowMaster lease optioning small apartment buildings has to do with guaranteeing the NOI , paying one payment to the owner, and hiring a management company to manage the tenants.

Having been in a variation of this situation before, I'm very interested in not having it happen again.