Does he do his own payroll?

You're missing a lot of crucial information like your target returns, park occupancy, location/market info, insurance, tax reassessment likelihood, payroll, R&M, management fee, water and sewer source, etc. 

A sophisticated investor will determine market value first.  

We have decided on the above mailers based on research indicating that multi-family / apartment owners in Los Angeles, CA tend to be more sophisticated and respond better to more professional mailers.

I would keep it simple and get a couple under my belt before getting all sophisticated and making things hard on yourself.   

Now at the same time having a lot of money doesn't make you sophisticated or necessarily mean that you know anything about investing but it does at least allow you to afford the consulting services of folks who can advise you accordingly.With all this in mind it's easy to see why personal residence is excluded from this calculation.

Unless landlording in places like Santa Barbara there are much more sophisticated, let's say white collar ways to invest in RE other than landording some POS asset in some POS location. 

This also makes it hard to compare apples to apples when shopping around or comparing multiple markets.If you're a sophisticated investor with lots of real estate experience than "going it alone" may work out for you. 

For a property 30 min. from me, I'd probably want to figure on the payroll expense of having an on-site "helper" for management...eyes and ears that report to YOU, not the management company.

I do know of a few that are able to raise funds from "Sophisticated Investors", which is defined rather loosely by the SEC, but essentially requires the investor has reasonable knowledge of the asset class and risk associated.