After I owned the property (or better said, after my business owened the property) and we had it leased out, I had a lot of my own money into the properties so I offered second position notes (promissory notes) performing at 11-12% for 4 years on some of these properties to pull out our some of own money out of the properties.

My leases spell out cleaning and paint rates.  

One of the most intriguing to me is using lease options, especially sandwich lease options.

My lease is going to be up soon and I want to move into a house that I can fix while I'm staying there.

Maybe nobody wants to lease that empty Toys R Us space to sell widgets ... but it might make sense to build apartments or condos there .

After meeting this applicant we became concerned because they had so many ammenments they wanted to make to the lease (the lease was not signed nor do we have a deposit from them), insistance of blinds in the kitchen area for privacy, plus we got an overall uneasy feeling about this person.

You can earn interest on that account as long as you make the tenant aware of that fact and they agree to it specifically in the lease. 

Perhaps a lease with option? 

I just signed a lease on our latest property in Sansom Park today which is next to River Oaks. 

One of my properties has a master lease so the entire building is rented day one and I start getting the entire rent check which makes for a very quick stabilization period.