I hope you kept the security deposit.

The whole point of investing is to make money and INCREASE your financial security. 

Think of all the things that could go wrong and see if the lease addresses them: unauthorized pets or tenants, early termination, security deposit, lease violations, late rent, eviction, lawn maintenance, parking, etc.5.

My IT background "scam" alarm is too high to do so myself, but their solicitation is usually an attractive rate compared with my usual rates so thought I would see what folks here thought. 

This issue can be avoided completely by transferring the property into a land trust.While a transfer to an LLC will cause alarms at the bank and prompt them to send you a letter, a transfer to a trust will not.

Whenever you pool investors money together, you need to consider securities issues.Maybe you're thinking about the limits that Fannie and Freddie put on borrowers that want to get investment loans on residential property?

Actually a lot of the info you'd get from an operating statement (gross rent, expenses, NOI, etc.) is available on many listing websites like Redfin and realtor.com, albeit not as up to date as the MLS and not always accurate but that goes for all data provided by listings.Regarding MLS access: it is protected carefully with various methods such as keystroke tracking, IP address, simultaneous login etc. and agents can get in a lot of trouble for sharing their login info, which is good because within the massive database is a lot of private info that can be dangerous in the wrong hands like lockbox and security system codes.

I have a contractor who reached out to me and wants to partner with me. he wants me to secure the property and pay for the material and the work but wouldn’t that just be me hiring somebody?

If your after long term investments then there are other more secure ways of making a 7 to 10%+ on your money for example like buying A paper notes ( mortgage Notes) than a saving account or stock market.

How much do you ask for when asking for a security deposit?