LolI’m looking to be more involved here on the forums to learn from people with more experience than I have.

Thanks and can’t wait to get more involved locally!

Mike Hurney My degree is in nutrition and my career goal is to be involved in global health research and field work.

I have been very involved in the solar industry for about a decade now, and more recently bridging the space between solar and real estate.

There’s no real tour involved so what I only include 3 to 4%, or do I assume same closing cost as a regular deal at 10%?

You pay for it, you work for it, you have substantial risk involved, the only person who should benefit is you.  

We cleaned the place from top to bottom and it was "move in ready" per his words.The rest of the story is a little longer than necassary so anyway, he is trying to keep our security deposit 100% citing our lease agreement. 

To be fair, he has been involved in real estate for decades (owned a manufactured homes company, flipped homes for a few years, etc.), but he is absolutely convinced that there's no way I could buy lower end homes in my city to rent without ending up bankrupt.

A friend recently had a tenant through the tenant's agent want to buy their house, and it fell through even with the agent involved as the tenant didn't qualify for the financing. 

Besides the obvious that your place could get gutted and cleaned out of anything valuable, there are a number of scams where your listing gets posted to Craigslist, someone else gets access (IE via your lockbox) and "rents" your property to unsuspecting victims.If you do collect fees electronically, don't use Paypal.