Purchasing competitively priced MF Units

[Andrew O.]

Good morning BP Family,

I've been reading the forums for a while, but this is my first post.  A quick intro about myself, I purchased my first rental property in Oct. 2017 and currently have 16 units.  I've mainly invested in single family homes, but this month I have purchased my first duplex and quadplex.  After doing this for 5 years I've learned that buying SF homes isn't very scalable, which brings me to the scenario below.

I recently looked at a quadplex that was listed on the MLS for $135k. No pictures of the inside, but the outside was brick and looked in good condition. It was fully occupied with tenants paying around $500/mo and market rent would be $800-$900/mo once remodeled. All utilities but trash were paid by tenants. I knew it was going to go quick. Since it was fully occupied, 24 hour notice was required for the tenants. I talked to my realtor and we set up a showing for 9am the next morning, which was the second showing of the day. By the time we left the quadplex and went to submit our offer it had sold. My realtor knew the first person that looked at the house and he didn't get it either. I checked the county website the other day and it shows an out-of-town investor purchased it, I'm assuming without looking at it. I know that sometimes you just lose deals, but is there anything I could have done differently? Should I have submitted an offer as soon as it was listed with a 10 day inspection period and backed out of the the deal within the 10 day period if the repair estimate was higher than I expected? I'm not really upset about losing this deal, but MF is relatively cheap and they go quick and I want to be in the best position I can be to get the deal. I'm curious what others do in situations like this?

Andrew