For instance, the term could be 3 years and add a clause that says they have to return the property to the condition it was in when they moved in, not just keep their deposit. 

Hello everyone,      Hopefully this post isn't in the wrong forum.

Would it be a good idea to take a deposit to secure the deal until the rule clears?

Read Averys book and past posts in this forum.

Keeping my eye on the worst houses in the best neighbors that need some reno that I can turn into STRs or LTRs.

One of the areas we see investors needing the most design help in is bathrooms.

Focus on absentee owners and start with the ones who live the farthest away and only own one property in the area since they have the least use for the property.You can also drive for dollars, looking for anomalies of disrepair and then look them up in the tax records and use a site like Spokeo to do cheap skip tracing.

. - Thought you might want to check out my response to this original post too. 

If the numbers work, the numbers work.

UW is only as good as the numbers that are entered into the data cells.