Has the seller received any notice of foreclosure, if so you need to head the other way if you can't buy it, this is full of new foreclosure landmines, if no notice has been given then you can proceed on the creative side.If you are acting as an investor, you can do an installment contract, as a real estate dealer selling to a consumer, buyer tenant, you'll have federal laws to comply with, pretty hard to do now.However, I'm more concerned with, what appears to be, the  intent of avoiding the mortgage requirements.

The reason is that is by state law you are considered an intermediary and not a principal, you are required to comply with the rules governing the behavior of licensed real estate professionals when running your wholesale operation.

You comply with the mortgage terms by living there a year and then convert to a rental.

However if you charge an owner occupant 6% and 4 points your total finance charge (less than 10% total) would stay under the (today's limit) close to 11.5%If you are going to sell with owner financing to owner occupants, then you just need to use an MLO/RMLO to run the numbers and that is just an extra closing cost that you can pass onto the buyer or just pay the cost yourself since the real reason to comply is to protect yourself.But none of that applies when we are buying with owner financing as investors, except for any state laws, and there are only a handful of states with strict investor limits.

You could call zoning and ask or apply for a variance, but it is unlikely, from my understanding, to be able to convince them that the conversion complies with the following guidelines: The variance is in harmony with the general purposes and intent of the zoning code.

I've complied with a lot of the improvements that they needed such as fixing the lights, chaining up the AC's, and forcing my tenants to register their cars for one.

In my opinion,, you'd have to give anyone in the building notice that has the same number of people in the same size apartment notice, and not renew if they are over occupancy.once you start that policy.. so you can post so people know that as of 9/1/2017 policy begins, and all will need to comply with the stated occupancy guidelines for lease renewal option.So simply,inherited tenant would need to leave or kick some of her kids out,,,Fair Housing Act is implied  

As long as it complies with all the other zoning conditions.  

If you are really going to settle on this property - you could ask the owner to give them a 60 day notice of rent increase - send this notice effect September 1st, (don't miss this mailing) raise the rent to the number you want - if the tenant agrees to accept the rent increase - great - if not - you would be in a position to eviction them based on the non-payment of the increase or they will just move - you may want to say in that increase rent notice that there are plans to improve their living conditions, supply new appliances and whatever you plan to do.Do this will help get what you want without vacancies and still have a tenant who will be happy to comply to the increase.Cash flow is King - don't kill the King.Charles

The city has already started to fine owners not complying and have actually initiating having the utilities turned off in some cases.If you want to do short term rentals in NOLA, your best bet is to find property that would qualify for commercial short term rentals, although the zoning required for these is hard to find and likely not in the most desirable short term rental areas.