The internet makes the world very small.As far as buying out of state, one challenge I did not see any other replies mention is your occupancy. 

tried real estate investing many years ago, before the internet era.

Compare apples to apples(SQ FT, bed/bath, layout, etc). 

We built a single family home version of a 2 bed 1 bath with surface parking at cost with no profit all in with land for 175k in newark ohio, a suburb of columbus ohio. when we push that to 3 units and closer to the city for our build to rent model the numbers go way better. a 30k slab for a single family home is 30k, a 30k slab for a triplex is 10k a door. we designed a 2 bed 1 bath design at 668 sq ft and it's very good layout even I would live there, but I would never build anything that small again. there's no economies of scale. you need density and shared lines, resources, shared roof shared slab, shared windows, etc the cost goes way down.

I'd love to see what the layout on the rooms looks like. 

It is too easy to scam over the internet.

I try sending a video or doing a live video walk-through with them so they can get a better idea of the layout, condition, neighborhood, etc.2.

Consider reconfiguring the layout to add windows where possible. 

Any article on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt and up to your discretion on how you want to take it and want you can gleam from it :)

While  I get my feet wet but , paying 2k-15k for information on the Internet is scam ..