So a family from another country comes in and mom and dad run the office - daughters are the maids, son and dad do the repair work, oldest son or daughter going to college is the night manager, etc.Further, they reach agreement with the bigger motels in the area to refer customers to them when the bigger motels are booked to capacity.   

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I’d love to hear from folks that’ve made mistakes too — anything that can help us avoid learning the hard way. 

You just send them your space info and style preferences, and they come back with a custom plan and shopping list.

Start treating tenants like you treat employees (not customers): if they do something wrong, the first question is: have we trained them on this? 

Is there any deals to be made as they say 10-50 cents on the dollar or is that a long gone dream?

If you had made the offer that was similar to the agents you maybe the one with that property now and not them.

This property analysis almost made me want to check it out in person, considering how close by the property is.

I made the decision to get into investing by starting out with a house hack but I only qualify for FHA financing due to having fair, but not bad credit and a higher debt to income ratio.  

Without knowing the details of the contract and the timing of notices we have no idea if you were taken advantage of or you simply made some bad choices.