We had the idea that I would grant him partial equity in the property for paying half of the mortgage.

If no, you are wasting a lot of effort and I will tell you why.The more shady the marketing, the more you need to push your credibility scorre up.If you have a nmber 1 ranking website and a ton of reviews and you are all over facebook with thousands of lieks and comments and myou give to charity and people talk about you and Google suggests you when people seach for keywords... sure you have enough credibility.But put a bandit sign out and people have no idea who or what you are  they need to have a way to find you on their own when they try to do a bit of research about you.So now you spend all this effort cold calling and what not, and when you DO finally score and the person is somewhat interested or at least curious, and you can not provide a website with your mission statement, an about us, and info about you, guess what will happen.

I’m about to list my remaining property.The thesis of m my investments there has been the idea that Yale and the other universities in New Haven have a vested interest in making sure New Haven is OK (or, ideally, nice), meaning that they will invest money in the community and expand their footprint to do so.

That is a lovely idea and intuitvely makes sense.

So there is a limited buyer pool and an even smaller pool of lenders for the buyers.  

Something to keep in mind however is that your choices may be limited depending on weather your PMC filed for eviction as 'them vs. tenant' (which is quite likely how it is now), if so, then you will have two choices: 1) You will have to let them handle eviction until the end OR 2) you will have to re-file for evition as 'you vs. tenant'. 

A prospective Buyer is likely looking for a place to move in with their family, and if you have a long term tenant in place with no future vacate date, then you are really limiting your buyer pool, and effectively running down your sales price. 

I say it's a bad idea, i'd rather buy different properties and use that money as down payment.

If you are interested in talking real estate investing and digging deeper into any of these ideas don’t hesitate to reach out!

PA law limits security deposits to 2 months for the first year and 1 month thereafter.The workarounds are to request 2 months of security plus the first month's rent at lease signing, then refund the 2nd month of security at the 1 year lease anniversary.