You can offer to buy the upstairs residents an area rug, but I wouldn't force it on them.   

If you buy in a city with limited appreciation, every investment dollar must come from your savings.

You can also offer to lease with an option to buy to tie up the property until you are ready to purchase. 

Subsequently I ended up buying property in 8 states, and a couple weeks ago bought 5 properties in 5 days in 3 states.

What would I need to do to structure the note in order to have a note buyer come in and buy the note or buy a partial enough to pay off the 215k at closing and still have some difference coming to me or the note revert back to me after the partial was paid for. 

Quote from @Pearse Cafiero: You want to borrow money to buy a house, but you don't have the downpayment.

Based on that number of units I would expect much higher figures - did you buy these buildings all/mostly cash?

@Christopher HeidrichRecommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?

A landlord policy can be a commercial policy or a personal lines policy.It's the same as asking if you should buy a single family rental or a 1 unit building.Focus on the coverages and disregard the name of the policy.

I’m a prior realtor, with wholesaler experience and have done some buy and holds in residential properties.