Months had gone by and no work was being done and he kept blaming the city for staling the permit, which I later found out was not true. 

A lot of it is coming down to finding something before it hits the market through your connections in the local market, or being ready to pay top dollar for the property that you know will cash flow and appreciate at what you paid for it.There are still deals to be found on market, but they are becoming harder and harder to find and requiring more creativity.

If you have a contractor doing work on one of your homes that accepts PayPal, then you've found your first Use Case! 

I found a couple of threads https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/79/topics/1147286-is-pa...andhttps://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/79/topics/1001612-pace-...There are others if you have the interest

I just found out the deal closed yesterday, but happy to shoot you over the numbers to take a look at the deal

The best thing to do would be to consult an attorney, but likely, that is not an option for everyone starting out.I'm not an attorney, and this is not legal advice, but some of the information that we include in our contracts is:- A clear scope of work - Payment schedule / Milestones- Change order approval process- Allowances for finished materials- Reasons to terminate the contract- Expectations for start date (X amount of time after final plans /permits are received or X amount of time after the contract is executed)- General schedule and timeline (This is where you could specify an end date - however it may be better use incentives rather than liquidated damage if your general contractor is late - we've done both, but found General Contractors respond better to getting something if they get done early instead of being punished for being late. 

I haven't found one that I'm impressed with? 

We found this deal on Craigslist and made payment to the owner How did you finance this deal?

Possibly should have done something about the deposit but everything that happened with him moving out was essentially conducted without notice to me and it's hard to say now whether I even found out he wasn't there within 30 days of his actually moving out.4.

I have been born and raised here and have found nothing but a great market here.