Devon, if you are worried another investor may contact the seller directly and offer a lower price, there is an instrument you can record called a "Memorandum of Agreement" or in some counties an "Affidavit of Agreement" this will record your interest in the deal, essentially placing a lien on the property, aka clouding title, while your purchase agreement is in place.

I leave my home airport and in 2.5 hours I am there and I call canpass and they give me a number to write on a little piece of paper I put it up on top of the instrument stack and off I go.Now coming back into the states that is a different story all together you get the once over by our border patrol.. and god forbid you need to pee when you land.. sometime they make you sit in your plane for 20 to 30 minutes before you can get out....

But this strategy required easy financing which is hard to come by these days.In your experience, do you see any difference between the two instruments if the deal goes south?  

I was concerned that a "Bond" would be a surety instrument that could only be issued by a licensed surety such as a title insurance company or bail bondsman. 

This helps mitigate the risk for the Note Buyer & if the Note performs well, you will have a more valuable instrument when you get it back.  

I love to learn and BP has been instrumental in furthering my real estate investing education.Harry

And how ever they set it up in the back room they have an advantage.. for instance in Oregon you cannot fractionalize a debt instrument for the purpose of a loan on 1 to 4 unit property.. so this gives the CF a very nice advantage over brokers in Oregon having to match one bene up with a trustor.But welcome to the site and will look forward to learn a little more about your transactions.

The borrower has an obligation to repair the sinkhole through the security instrument (mortgage in FL) or be considered in breach of contract.  

When you have a Note in real estate, we tend to secure the "promise to pay" with a security instrument (ie mortgage).  

No matter which instrument you use to conduct business (and I agree ROFR is they way to go) my advice is to keep the emphisis on it being a business transaction.