If you want to trip him up suggest to him that he set up a separate checking account himself to put the money into and issue you 12 post dated checks on the account.

As a military professional, I love seeing civilians with such good character and professionalism.

I was looking to buy some out-of-state rental properties and got introduced to this agent in August when I did a field trip.

Also, it was knee high the day after they moved out, its not like we waited a week or two for things to get out of hand then tried charging them.Lightbulbs are about $3 each but require a trip to the local Hardware store and time to remove the light shade, etc.  

Also, I would love to go to a meet up, will definitely try to schedule a trip out there to make one of them soon.

This allows you to write off for trips where nothing came out of it as well because if you had to close and could only report it then, you'd never be able to report trips you didn't close on. 

I really hope that this issue gets resolved fairly quickly without a 4.5 hour trip down to Virginia to find out whether he is still living in the property.

I also made no less than 4 trips to the area to just look around, get a feel for the area and talk with a few people in city government.I can tell you that I am no expert at this, and although my investments have been successful so far, this same process can be replicated in 100's of cities, which meet the same criteria that I look for in long term RE investing. 

The thing that looks as if it will trip me up is the loan has to be for at least 750k.  

If someone trips and falls in a mole mound and hurts themselves, then you're going to have much bigger issues that bad grass.