New to investing - looking at an apartment

[Tracy Morris]

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to do a quick introduction.  My husband & I live in central IL & house was gifted to us about 2 yrs ago. We decided to turn it into a rental. The 1st year we fell hard as we were learning.  The 2nd yr has been great! We have a good property manager, an attorney & are switching to a CPA that knows real estate investing.  

We now have the bug to buy more. My husband said "go big or go home" - out property manager introduced us to an older couple who wants to unload their 12 unit apartment complex. They'd consider doing contract for deed for 3 yrs. 

We're still new and we barely have our feet wet with rentals. I will be finding out the true costs of running the apartment to make sure we can net good profit...but my question is...how do we do MLO or Contract for deed for just 3 yrs & still build up cash for the down payment to finance afterwards? The asking price is $450,000 (pulls in $85k gross/yr as is). 

Thanks for any help or questions I need to be thinking over!