Honestly, at this time I would concentrate on building my credit.

There is so much going on with towns like we are in if you are willing to look and have the eye for it because what I know with Rome is that it is such a huge concentration of medical specialists.It definitely would be a great market to do student rentals in especially with Shorter and Berry being that close to each other. 

Even within our neighborhoods, the violence is concentrated to certain areas/blocks of certain bad neighborhoods.

.- Concentration advantage of MFH is that geographically your units are concentrated.

@Jarid Johnson It's hard to tell from your post whether you want to concentrate on flips first or buy&hold.

I have been concentrating on building a portfolio of rental properties but I have done a fix and flip.

After that, I felt that it was a concentrated area of the business and signed up.

Forget the old lady and concentrate on setting your self up to purchase at fair market value when the time comes for her to sell.

There are some that are more focused on residential (flipping, wholesaling, etc) but there are a few that concentrate multifamily and or commercial.  

I always recommend for a new or potential investor to pick a focus and concentrate on that.