For the most part, MF 4+ owners are vastly more sophisticated thank mom/pop sfr owners and may offer carry back financing to mostly benefit them not the buyer.

Before we moved here our perception of the area was worse than it is now.

Spending thousands of $ to fly to an in-person event and then to Cincinnati with no promise of any return, spending hundreds of hours and pulling 90 hour weeks to underwrite for free, getting in front of sophisticated investors and pitching them a deal as a complete newbie...

My initial thought is to generate an excel doc to capture, organize, and automate this process, but hoping there are more sophisticated options available. 

I addressed it...As I pointed out, I didn't live 80 years ago, so I have no idea what the social stigma of welfare was.Let me also point out that you didn't live 80 years ago either, so you are either relying on the memories of people who are very old, the perceptions of media and culture, or the romanticized beliefs you've gained through some experience or medium.

These lenders are more sophisticated in dealing with investors, as they've consciously decided to follow Fannie's 10-property limit, unlike most secondary market lenders that apply a 4-property limits.

Often times, perception carries more weight than the truth, therefore my desire to correct it.

Being nice to a litigious tenant might not save you from a lawsuit, but sometimes the idea of a lawsuit results from the perception that the other party does not care. 

While their perception may or may not be reality, their perception is ultimately what matters because that is who you are marketing your property to.

In my view, smaller apartments are ripe for acquisition (i.e market inefficiencies, etc.) since fewer shrewd, sophisticated GPs are available to make offers.