Meanwhile, he was inefficient with with how he outsourced his labor, so his profit margins were already thin.

Self-dealing would be if you personally did any work on the property, but as long as you outsource everything - you are good there.

Most people will discuss the following benefits of multifamily (1) economies of scale (2) for 5 units and above, you can impact the value of the property by increasing the NOI (3) efficiency...all units in one location (4) some regional multifamily vendors/contractors for things like painting and flooring are very affordable, quick, have systems in place and will be around for the long haul.For me, I moved to MF because I had too...not enough time to source SFR.One of the biggest challenges you will hear about MF is finding good property management if you have to outsource.  

As the lists begin to grow larger, I am finding it would be a more effective use of my time if I were to outsource this data find.

Should I be lower on this; maybe I can outsource this part as well?

I've found that it can be very time consuming and am especially interested in automating and outsourcing as much as possible.

The only difference is the customer service is not outsourced.

Outsourcing some tasks may help, too...I am pretty small scale by design --but lots of folks on BP own large portfolios and add rentals regularly (how many also have FT jobs in full families sort of goes to your prompt)...So they can chime in and some probably have a template for a part timer to add a few rentals every year--and keep sane!

Also, if you scale and want to outsource your bookkeeping, a cloud-based solution will work a lot better than a local, on-prem solution. 

Eventually he will get tiered and want help if not outsource the whole project.