It's not my area of expertise and believe those who focus on this line of work on a day to day basis will attract buyers and achieve a 2.5-3% better result than if I were to do this on my own.

If you are not in a good neighborhood, you will not be attracting great tenants and sharing a duplex with someone can be a highly stressful and unpleasant experience, especially if the structure is not truly conducive to being a duplex.

I am super attracted to the idea because I love to fix and flip, and the emount of money to get started is so much less. 

I'm seeking advice on scaling my real estate portfolio and attracting potential investors.

From a property appreciation / ROI-on-sale point of view, its unclear how attractive such a property would be for a future buyer.Would really appreciate your thoughts on this Invest 5S proposition or similar build-to-rent units.

When you have a VERIFIABLE record of success within specific property types - and typically specific geographical areas, you MAY be able to attract enough passive investment to begin syndicating smaller type deals.  

My day job industry (Solar) has attracted some interesting characters over the years so I'm no stranger to the effect a few bad apples can have.

But we also added lease options to our model which attracted a better tenant and lessened the the amount of work that it took to manage the lease option properties.So I would encourage you consider investing in your own back yard before going out of state, especially if you live in North Carolina. 

This should be required reading for new investors, drooling over the great cashflow they will make buying crappy houses in crappy neighborhoods that attract crappy tenants.

At the time I looked, 20 or so years ago, the problem with smaller down towns is the proliferation of nearby strip malls, where the stores are surrounded by a large parking lots, and for laundromats, attract more customers as they can park easily, walk to adjacent stores for shopping, snacks, and browse newspaper and magazine racks, which explains why they do better, there's more customers.