Since they are considering renting their properties out, sell them on the concept of getting consistent cashflow from you - without the hassles of being a landlord.You will then need to make sure you can make those monthly payments EVERY month in addition to do remodels.

I tell people to start by picking a strategy (OOS long term, OOS short term rental, fix and flip, etc) THEN pick a market and submarket THEN look for good tools/people, doing it any other order tends to be an exercise in futility. 

Then you can read a more in-depth book like The Book On Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner or The Unofficial Guide to Real Estate Investing by Spencer Strauss.2.

I first like to short list based on numbers and then deep dive.

I've lost count of the number of RAD investors who posted in the BiggerPockets forums about their "hard money loans" and then having their distributions "frozen".

I will be speaking to a local one tomorrow morning and then go from there. 

Then just use a normal couch.

These will give you the out numbers, and then you can work backwards once you know the repair costs.

Then I'd push those factors out if there were no good comps.  2 miles, 6 months.  2 miles 12 months , etc.It takes some local knowledge to know when you're pushing those parameters out too far to be useful. 

Then scale to multifamily eventually if you want.