In addition, all that Portland and the outlying areas have to offer in terms of recreation, shopping (no sales tax in Portland), and entertainment is easily accessed from Vancouver.Real estate prices are more favorable in Vancouver as compared to Portland.

You can easily get anywhere between 12%-24% ROI here in Orlando.

Am I handcuffing myself by buying a single family home, or do you think I would be able to easily pull some equity out of the house to pursue a multi family down the road.  

And I agree with @Rick Bevilacqua, a legitimate contractor with worker's comp and a crew of 3 could easily cost $1000/day.

You should be able to easily fit all the debris in a 20 yard dumpster.

You will eventually use them and if you have it there you can easily fix a running/leaking toilet in less than 30 minutes.

I know lots of business-people who don't work in the day-to-day aspects of their business (and some no longer work in the business at all), and most of them don't have any partners.Those who do have partners don't have them in order to pass off work -- they have them in order to compensate for skills they don't have themselves and they can't easily hire out to employees or contractors.

During your initial research of the property list you should look for the county civil court records to see if any of the above have been named as defendants in the suit to foreclose, that is quick and can easily be done from home (in my county at least).  

Make his/her job very easy by giving them the MLS# so that they can look it up easily. 

Here's what I would do: get it under contract ASAP with a relatively long due diligence period (60-90 days) and market it in several ways: 1) debt or equity raise paying investors 8-10% interest or splitting up the equity with you taking x% for finding/managing the deal; 2) piecemeal wholesale (sell individual or smaller bundles of the properties; or 3) wholesale it all.You can easily raise that down payment money if the deal is good enough.