Stipulate the change order percentage, with receipts and payroll hours, etc.

I haven't explored condo conversions or anything like that as it involves a more sophisticated market understanding that I don't have yet.

@Ashley Benning, many sellers (at least the more sophisticated ones) won't accept proof of funds letters from hard money lenders.  

These are things you can give in detail to the buyer:Cash flow on businesses, condition of equipment, payroll, more info on liquor license transfer, are there existing liabilities, is the seller willing to sign a non-compete clause in case they want to open another similar establishment or invest in one,  ask about current manager...staff experience, are they willing to stay. 

@Steve VaughanGreat strategy...but oftentimes accompanied by additional payroll taxes.

This is one in which the issuer (or a person acting on its behalf) has sufficient information to evaluate, and does, in fact, evaluate, a prospective offeree’s financial circumstances and sophistication, in determining his or her status as an accredited or sophisticated investor.

If it's a high-touch (i.e. people wash the cars) you have staffing, compliance, payroll, etc. to deal with and you have no idea how "creative" employees are when it comes to theft.

We've found it really tough to get satisfactory touch up results with a contract painter though, so we've added a painter to our payroll.

If you want a lot of paperwork you will typically end up with a larger residential contractor, who has staff (sales and admin) on payroll to do that.

You will see they are investing in the strongest markets, have great broker networks / access to deals which is critical in a highly competitive market, can raise significant capital to take advantage of scale, more disciplined / conservative underwriting models, have simple well thought out business plans to increase the properties value, using fixed rate 10yr loans to take advantage of still incredibly low rates historically speaking and use more sophisticated tool sets to help understand how fluctuations in occupancy, rents, etc may impact their models.