On top of that these people have to take off work, skip jobs, they are already floating the cost of a lot of work, now they have to float the cost of the lawyer/court costs - it's generally not beneficial to either party.

Admittedly I am new to this and I haven't written a creative offer before. 

Focus on how to juice cash flow if possible (rent by the room, separating spaces, etc.) or decreasing expenses (assuming a loan, looking at new build incentives, aggressive offers w/ rate buy downs that work for you, etc.) 

Turnkeys offer less hands-on management which is ideal for beginners and it give you valuable experience as a landlord.

He is a mentor of mine as well, and is not so interested in making money but rather he told me that he likes to see 7% in his passively invested accounts, so I offered and he accepted that I would pay him 8% APY On the principal that I borrowed. 

We just made an offer on our first deal.

You can explain to the Realtor that if you don't do this, then it has to be a cash buyer and they will offer less.

So if you're buying a stabilized cash flowing asset, the returns you'd have to offer a PML would be lower.

We are currently offering 12-16% interest to our private money investors which we feel is a strong offer in this market.

I think the Iowa City, Coralville, and North Liberty markets offer great rentals with lots of different types of levels of rent.