I feel like my market of Montana is a little pond with a lot of fish as far as real estate investing goes and don't know exactly where to start. 

Great hunting, fishing, skiing, cross country, inexpensive golf , Presque Isle state park for beach goers. 

So they will again fish..

There are ALWAYS going to be "bigger fish to fry".In each deal, with all of the different moving parts, if someone is more focused with what is on "your arm", than the deal in front of them they need to wrap "their arms" around, then they are taking their eye off the ball and probably not seeing the whole bigger(pockets) picture.

Now if they are not paying at all thats a different kettle of fish. 

 Hey Gary,We have found in the past that the most efficient way to get it now on days is to create your own list of interested buyers and sellers from a landing page on your website that will require all of the information you need in order to make a decision upfront if the lead is a good fit or not and then close it.In order to do so, you would like to create a Shopify website in which you will list all of your properties and attract quality traffic through paid search and social media, then guide the interested people in to your landing page, this way you will create your own converting customers' database, way cheaper than fishing huge outdated databases.Should you have further questions please do not hesitate to ask,Cheers.

You probably want to have everything planned out up front, but I think you have bigger fish to fry right now: the two biggest challenges you have to tackle  first are finding a deal and finding a contractor.Inventory and supply have been extremely effected by Covid, while buyer activity level is trough the roof, also fueled by extremely low interest rates.

Fish -- if you have tied up "prime properties" in a legitimate college rental area that are 65% of ARV you will have NO PROBLEM finding interested buyers.Why are you not doing exactly that?

I'm starting to wonder if the Seller is just fishing for a base price (this lot is hard to comp) instead of actually wanting to accept an offer.

Roy, followed this through three forum posts, LOL.I'm a fish out of water as to mortgages or requirement out of the country, in your neck of the woods.Basically, other posts cover most of this on BP.You probably have a mortgage, look at it as to form and content for your note.The costs involved should be minimal, filing fees are a few dollars a page here, I doubt any second here could rack up a hundred dollars in costs, not counting an attorney fee.As to terms, here we can offset payments, allow accrual of interest and such on loans not cobered by our SAFE Act.If you want to piggyback interest, it's better to have a higher rate with an obligation to pay a lower amount which would allow the remaining interest to compound if simple interest.Really need more information as to what you want to do or how you want payments to be paid or received to suggest details.But again, you need to take all this to an attorney up there, what I do or suggest may not be applicable. :)