I am a Real Estate agent in Memphis and I had listing and therefor was representing the seller.  

Our negotiation approach focused on building rapport with the seller, allowing us to secure the property below market value.

At the beginning, it may be difficult to get a more expensive property that will appreciate well and so your choice is go with the cheaper property and get cash flow until you can sell and upgrade, or wait for a really good deal which you may be waiting for quite a while and its possible that you will have spent so much time waiting that you could have purchased multiple cash flowing properties by the time you get a good appreciation deal that you can qualify for / refinance after the rehab. i know anyone can go out and get seller financing deals, HML, flip to build capital or whatever the case may be I am just saying sometimes those will be harder and could result in less deals overall. 

Some operators close upon tenant moving in .. some when they get CO  myself I always try to get them to close before tenant makes the transaction much easier on the seller not having to interrupt the tenant and doing punch list much easier then put the tenant in.. in my mind if you are going to have an issue losing one month of rent because of this your being unrealistic for a long term hold your going to have vacancy at some point so why not the first month. 

When the housing market became seller friendly, I unloaded 5/6 of our long term rental units, paid off our house with that and invested in stocks and mutual funds…completely no fun, right??

I am not in the flipping market but I handle multifamily transactions for buyers and sellers who are very transactional.

The sellers says it's just college boys and that's to be expected.He's currently getting good rents...as unbelievable as it may seem and if cleaned/fixed up it could make more as well as increase the value of the property.We own several coworking/coliving properties in the US and Mexico, so we are used to hospitality and properties out of state.However, my questions are;Is this a norm for college students, or student housing? 

Supposedly, they connect sellers with brokers and homebuyers in each market.

There was quite a bit of unused land and the zoning gave me some flexibility if I wanted to expand various aspects of the property.Also the self storage units were all below market rent and the seller was willing to finance at a decent rate with a 5 year balloon.

When a seller lists their property, they often agree to compensate the buyer's agent separately, though the exact terms depend on the offer made.