You brought up some great points.Thanks again,Kyle

Do I approach the owner for any reason- try to see the inside? 

This deal is not going to be accomplished safely as most approach an option to purchase, your agreement could well be 100 pages or more, addressing terms of sale, how liens for advances are applied toward the purchase, your interests acquired prior to other liens filed, insurance assignments, that's not counting lease assignments, attachments of lease terms and conditions, maintenance agreements and schedules, authorization to encumber the property and to pay liens.

Sounds like a reasonable approach to me :) 

Diary entry 5:  Approaching the deadline.  

This brought us to one of the seminars that cost of $2000 to attend and then they talked us into $20K program that sounded like we would be getting a good amount of support.

Hi Corey,The strategy we took with a 203k loan was to get into the 203k loan first, and pay the PMI, and then refinance as quickly as possible once the renovation was completed and we had brought the property value up, so we could get rid of the PMI.This is a more expensive option (you pay two sets of closing costs), but we couldn't afford the up-front costs on a conventional renovation loan, so it's what we did, and the numbers worked out once we evaluated the savings from eliminating the PMI.I would shop around different lenders to see what kind of conventional renovation loans they offer.

In my past 3 houses I did a buy & hold approach successfully, so I'll probably stay with that method.  

What is really the best way to approach this, thanks again I appreciate any suggestions!  

I'm looking to take a more hands-on approach to avoid the problems that I had with these 70 units.