Some type of seller financing?

Plus one of the benefits you'll be interacting with lots of people - sellers and buyers and may by chance come across your future partner to jointly buy MFH.  

May I suggest you find an OOS market that has higher rental demand, so that imperfections in management don't translate as directly to lost rents.

All 3 worked out perfectly without a single issue or hiccup, and I now use those seller's as references.

Yes, there are some multi-family units here in Atlanta, but they are in very high demand!

However the advantage of having the extremely well located property is that you can be certain that there will always be demand for that property and even 20-30 years from now.

However, you would need to make sure that the rental rate you could demand would cover the new loan payment plus other expenses while still cash flowing.

The prices for these dilapidated buildings can be very reasonable and if they have been out of commission for a while, some sellers are willing to accept creative financing options.I started my journey of searching for old motels in Michigan about a year ago, only focusing on it on my spare time while I work on my e-commerce businesses.

Yeah you definitely want to know your MAO going into any negotiation with the seller.

One of the ideas we are batting around is to negotiate a lease purchase with the sellers, where we would finish the 3rd unit, and then purchase the property at a pre-negotiated price.