I recommend you knock on the neighbors door and ask if they know how to get in touch with the family or owner.

*But let me be clear, I am not knocking multifamily - I am huge fan and will continue to be. 

The greatest chance for water to accumulate is during a bad storm, which can knock out the power and render the pump useless.

Knock some doors and go find yourself a deal!

That was a totally useless and presumptive knock. 🙄 Best of luck in your journey!

I'm not sure if you're married to these locations and having "people" there, but in lieu of Chicago and for a much more modest purchase price offset, I can suggest Indianapolis. $200K in Indy would very likely open up both buy & hold doors  as well as fix & flip for you in different areas of the city. 

Go knock on the doors to that building. 

I imagine I’ll contract out some roofing, foundation, framing, electrical, and plumbing, but I’m pretty confident I can knock out the rest of the things with my lady to make our first property extra special.

Maybe we can recruit some solid door-to-door solar or pest control sales stars to knock pre-foreclosures or probates.

I do this for 2 reasons: first, I line up all the potential tenants in 5-10 min increments and knock it all out in less than an hour and second: it weeds out the tire-tickers.