I'm curious if anyone has found a good vehicle to earn interest on security deposits? 

If the owner provides 100% financing, that means he creates an Installment Sale and uses the 1st trust deed as the vehicle. 

I've never seen any vehicles so I do believe it is abandoned.I did some research and found a lis pendens filed on 8/19/2015.

The Living Trust is a specific vehicle specifically intended to address this issue.A) the Trust must predate the demise of all property owners of recordB) the property must then be VESTED into the Trust (using a quitclam deed)contact a Trust lawyer for the details.

They did leave something for their vehicle I want to try and get back to them.I plan to email, text, and call - to offer to hold the item for 7 days.Also - curious if you or anyone else here has a good reference/lawyers/advice on seeking "back pay."

If nothing else, gives you a lot to research about the business (e.g. tax-deferred investment vehicles, how to package deals for private/hard money, elements to consider for deal assessment, etc.)

However, depending on the types of investments you are planning to make you may want to use IRA owned LLC (aka Checkbook IRA) to gain the checkbook control over your retirement funds and to eliminate the fees (transaction fees, asset based fees, etc.) associated with having custodial SD IRA.In most cases you don't need to do a 1031 tax deferred exchange in an IRA when selling a property because an IRA is already tax-deferred vehicle. 

This is basically a mortgage product that combines the above concept into a more streamlined vehicle that takes the best of each of these 3:1) HELOC feature2) ARM Loan  3) Checking account with routing number and account number The three features above make it superior to a regular HELOC because:- it caps rate at 6% above start rate which is similar to a ARM loan which has caps as opposed to typical HELOC's which have caps at 18% typically- checking account allows you to use the loan as a direct deposit so your paychecks or deposits that park in your account lower your balance and your effective interest daily, day to day- unlike regular HELOC the loan can be drawn upon if you need funds for all 30 years as opposed to 10 years with a HELOC and the remainder of the 10-20 years were principal and interest with no more draw upon the line capability during the initial 10 years (unless you refi into a new HELOC of course)

He could also likely confirm if a straight partnership is truly appropriate or some other vehicle such as an multi member LLC might be preferable for various reasons.Likely such involvement won't come cheap, but if you are really serious about getting into this business a defective operating agreement is a really bad way to kick things off.

I LOVE THIS VEHICLE!