Example: An earnest deposit can be taken in any form.

A few gotchas:1) Tenants might be month-to-month, and could leave at any time2) Leases may be lost or non-existent, making it potentially harder to collect rent and/or utilities, or to evict if you need to3) Is there a sec deposit?

I let a husband and wife (she's an acquaintance of mine) move into a SFH without paying the deposit.

Slim to none on that anyway.Personally I have lost a lot of money on land deposits and unfortunately so will my investors.

My estimated rent range was $850 but it was rented out for $950 with an $800 deposit.

My hope would be you have some sort of deposit to help cover costs.

We didn't renew his lease, but offered him $250 and his full deposit if he moves out 15 days early.

I will have security deposit check in hand, do the walk through when you hand me the keys, and I will hand you the check.

Buyer will put down 10% deposit.

I wonder who's going to pay the advertising, office supplies, management, maintenance, entity maintenance, damage done by tenants (above the security deposit), legal fees, utilities (during vacancies), evictions, vacancy expenses, lawsuits, capital expenses, etc, etc, etc (I could go on and on and on).