Investment Banker for a large bank in NYC during the day, I've also been investing in real estate on the side and I created my own website to distribute comprehensive spreadsheets for real estate investments (see profile).

The contract will probably also state that deposits cannot be distributed unless both parties sign off, so in practicality, the deposit ends up getting split.If you're represented by an attorney or title company, they should be handling this for you. 

As I have looked deeper into this model it looks like thousand of people are having success, although the techniques of finding and event selling the properties vary the goal is the same, buy cheap land from motivated land sellers and flip that land for 3-4 time what you paid for.

I am listening to Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner and I'm at the topic of negotiation techniques.One of the techniques listed is the Red Herring Technique. 

IF I use a Private Money lender for all of the costs I will offer them a larger return if they can fund all of it and receive their funds back as a distribution at closing of the sale or refinance.  

I have used this technique before and found it rather stressful.

Also something I forgot to mention, if you have a regular SDIRA or a QRP (including ROTH), you will have to get required minimum distribution (RMD) after a certain age (usually 70 1/2).

@Mike DymskiYou mean “you’re super fat, you should join my gym...” isn’t a great sale technique?

There is another way around the deposit that can bring to the closing, if you get the seller to agree to a second mortgage on the property with a negotiated interest rate favorable to the owner of the property, depending on the flexibility of the mortgage company and it sounds as if the mortgage company is working with a flexible lender as he is recommending you take a loan for the 20% deposit, the actual lender he is working with might accept the second mortgage as the deposit and close with you, this no money down technique works best (gets the owners on board) if you offer a decent rate on the 20%, additionally if they are in need of the funds soon but want to sell you can make the terms a very short term as I offer when I want to buy a property with this technique, offer a two year balloon payment to start, 24 months is a long time to refinance the property and now you enter my zone of leveraging (Mwwaahhahahahaha) you do a few upgrades that will improve the properties value (creative equity) I have done insane cash out loans this way (I purchased a home for $10,000 put $5,000 and the appraisal came back at 110,000, I took a 90% cash out loan and pocketed $96,000 check in my hand, remember that the property only cost me $15,000 in total, sooo....

However, when discussing how we would distribute profits, he said we would go halfers on everything, except he would charge me full price for the construction job his company does on each flip.