I don't have any currently but what I did in the past was I had them rent a unit and sign a lease agreement. As long as they worked for me I would credit their account each month for the rent due and then subtract that from their BOT/Caretaker pay for the month.

@Wes Eaves sounds like you have a great opportunity to practice, learn and setup systems so you are more comfortable/prepared to buy facilities that are farther away.

I have never charged a deposit but facilities I have bought had collected them which transferred to me in the sale. I setup a Security Deposit Account in my Quickbooks chart of accounts to keep this money separate from the rental income. I entered these deposits into my ESS software but because I didn't collect the deposit I was not able to refund it when they moved out. A deposit can only be refunded to the card that it was billed to so if a tenant no longer has that card you need to write a check or find some other way to refund it like refunding some or all of there last rent payment in the system. Keeping track of the refunds in QB took extra time too. I found that I also had a lot more conversations with tenants when they moved out because of the deposits: Them wanting to know when they would get it. Debating about what was considered clean. Getting calls 2 months after they moved out asking why they didn't get their deposit and then having to look back at notes and saying well you left items in the unit and they get made and say they'll come back and clean it out. Getting bad reviews about not refunding deposits... The facility I purchased 3 months ago only had 8 tenants with deposits and I choose to credit the deposits to their accounts so I wouldn't have to deal with that again. After all that I will say that I do think you would probably get a better quality renter since they have the funds to pay rent and a deposit. I think it just depends on what you are dealing with in your market and maybe charging deposits would be less work for you than cleaning out trashed or damaged units.