I'd rather pay the extra few bucks an hour to have a person physically in the office that I can train in person.I just don't want my people to sound like every other call center on the planet, people already hate getting cold calls, especially when its someone speaking broken English on the other end that really doesn't care about them.I would like some good people in the office that can call the people and have a genuine conversation about their situation, and determine how we can help them. 

I then transform the property by improving management, making improvements, increasing rents, filling the property, and lowering expenses.

It is going through a transformation and values are still relatively low. 5-10 years down the road it will be a completely different area. 

I want to be behind the scenes working towards the transformation first.

No one wants to be sold to so if you can transform from the selling to educator your response rate will soar.

If you can genuinely solve a problem for her by buying the place then that's a different thing, but.... it's easy for that to get complicated too.

All that might be fine, so long as you're genuinely conservative about the cost to bring the electrical wiring/metering up to code and any other up front repairs needed.Otherwise, it looks like you already know your answers, so how can we even help?

GR8 story and incredible transformation! 

I know I have the stomach to go into or near the "war zones" (as does my husband) to not only invest but proactively transform the neighborhood. 

This could cause you to miss something good.Unfortunately, some guru sales pitches might come off as a genuine local REIA meetup.