I look at it as a long term bond, paying me regular income into my IRA that I can take or leave if I want to.

Creative financing is about the use of assets, pledges, assignments, notes, annuities, bonding, securities, insurance, cash flow, sharing interests and other techniques very few on BP are even aware of, so I'm just thinking that your knowledge of this topic is grossly lacking.

Within 14 days from the day the tenant moves in, the landlord must provide written notice of the following: a) The landlord’s name and address for receipt of communications regarding the tenancy; AND b) The name and address of the financial institution where the security deposit is held, OR the name and address of the surety company; and who filed the bond with the Secretary of State; AND c) The tenant’s obligation to provide a forwarding address—in writing—within 4 days after the tenant moves out."

If he does file a lien, talk to a construction attorney....you can likely "bond it off" the property, and he will know how to proceed.

I was hoping to get my feet wet and cut my teeth- as it turned out, I learned to tread water while someone was stomping on my head(which I suppose is a valuable education??)

but it's pulling teeth to actually see the contract and get it signed, "lawyer hasn't gotten it to him, oh sorry more health stuff, stupid lawyers didn't draft it right" and on top of that we're in two states and the property is in Texas and the property still has his sublet in place and they apparently pay just fine.Long story short has anyone had experience ending a relationship/contract like this and then just working with the renter?

Of course, you still get to defer ALL taxes within the IRA, so I look at that as a major advantage as one's available funds for investing can grow much faster if the tax man is not eating into the profits.It is true that the IRA could invest in other more standard investments (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc) and the investment property must beat the pants off of these other avenues to make it worth it, but there is another thing to consider when approaching this ...

I would not do it out of state again (another story), but you can invest locally in REI with your Roth IRA once you build it up, or invest in REITs with it, or just keep it in stocks/bonds to diversify as mentioned already ... all very good options ...

While all of our recommendations on if one should set up a finance company are in part based on what states someone is interested in operating in (because of licensing challenges) there is no state where we would recommend anyone doing so unless they were regularly and consistently loaning out a minimum of $50,000.00 per month and in many states ten times that because of costs related to licensing and bonds and other issues. 

The 08 mortgage crisis happened because bonds containing mortgages were sold en-masse all over the globe.