Just like how Johnson & Johnson or Coca-Cola send you quarterly dividend checks, your tenants are sending you monthly "dividends" in the form of rent.

Hello, it is really time consuming for me to analyze each property by manually entering its data to calculate the return.

for me  a handful since early 80s  now in those days I was ONLY buying land that had owner contracts on them. 

This is very much a learning process for me 50% rule, 2% rule so on so forth.

I’ve visited every other property I’ve considered in the past, so this is uncharted territory for me, and it feels a little out of my comfort zone.I’m considering putting it under contract sight unseen to lock it up, but I don’t want to make a rookie mistake here.I'm looking for some advice here.

For me >12 mo for long term cap gains. 

It's was so easy for me getting started to get shiny object sindrome instead of locking in ONE STRATEGY, ONE NEIGHBORHOOD, ONE PROPERTY TYPE, ONE RENOVATION TYPE, etc. 

We have both always been interested in forming some partnership in which I do the leg-work and he provides the finances.

Are there any creative ways you’d recommend for me to identify and approach motivated sellers or uncover foreclosures?

That's what I get from relying on the IRS forms.