No deals go perfectly, it's easy to put that responsibility on someone else, but if you do the above, most of your problems will become much smaller. 

Hello,I am looking to sell my condo in Icon (preferred no agent deal) and wanted to see if there was any interest within the BP community?

If you have no skin in the game, you'll usually start at 50% equity and work your way from there depending on what you can offer.But doing 10 deals a year with a partner is much better than doing 1 or 2 deals on your own. just be open and flexible to make a deal that's mutually beneficial

He wants to get back on the property ladder and we have talked about me putting in 50% of the deposit needed to purchase a house.

I currently own & operate two STR‘S in SoCal USA, both fee-simple, no leasehold, so I’m new to this concept. 

There will be no gain on the sale of the property for the estate since we got the stepped up basis when she passed.

To answer some of your other questions in general about Huntsville, there are almost no basements here, and you never want a pool for a rental unless its an STR, which are now forbidden here without proper zoning and permitting.  

If it were a no name brand, I might be more wary, but it’s a brand with a good reputation. 

DSTs suffer from 3 main problems:1) Low returns (aka 4-6% ish)2) High fees3) Poor / no liquidityThe combination of these factors makes DSTs pretty terrible investments right now.

It's too bad no one shared this with you during the transaction since several people involved with the deal surely knew this requirement.