Welcome aboard @Clark ScrogginSounds like you have some great resources at your disposal.

I have a client looking at a 12 unit apartment building, 12 stoves, 12 fridges, 12 dishwashers, 2 large water heaters, 12 garbage disposals.

If so, I would ask them to either remove everything or to sign a release authorizing you to remove / dispose of it as you see fit.

Our jobs provide some extra disposable income that we would like to apply toward investing in real estate.

I avoid Garbage disposals. 

You could at least buy yourself some time to figure out if it's worth buying once you get your things in order and have traditional financing at your disposal.

Further, tracking down npn in bulk, analyzing thousands, buying packages, reselling some, working on getting the remaining reperforming and foreclosing and then disposing of the rest is far different than analyzing two or three performing notes offered by a note broker and purchasing one or two and collecting monthly payments until they are paid off. 

I recognize that one can not take a passive loss if their income is over 150k; however, from what I have read, it states that if you dispose of/sell your rental that you can deduct the passive losses the year you sell. 

I also agree that leverage is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal.

For comparison, apartments were down -6.7%, retail down -12.3% and for a baseline the S&P 500 was down over 22%.When the economy is good, and disposable income is on the rise, people buy more “stuff” and need a place to store it.