This lawsuit has no legs.

The unit was completely dirty, damaged and looked like a fixer upper.

The owners may agree to carry part of the financing, but you won't need them to stick around to transition operations.After acquiring the properties and assets you wish, you would either run your own business, or part-out and resell some of the assets.From your post, it does not sound like parting out the properties is a viable path and where you admit to having no experience with vacation rentals or the resort business, you might want to explore purchasing the business with the current owners hanging around for a bit to help you get your feet wet.Regardless of approach, it needs to have legs to be worth pursuing.

Is there an option or strategy I'm missing for the first leg of this?

If you get a copy of the seller's deed from the public records and it was prepared and recorded by a title company, their file number is probably on it, most likely in the upper left-hand corner. 

Its defiantly a good idea to do as much due diligence as you can on the seller if you are looking at doing a partial or a note fund.If it goes non-performing you need to make sure you can trust the person who will be responsible for getting the note re-performing and you need to understand the contract so you understand how the event of a non-performer should play out.I would definitely put Chris in the upper echelon of note investors based on my research and experience. 

ADR and RevPAR are expected to grow steadily, with upper-tier properties seeing slightly higher growth rates.3.

A handy search bar in the upper right makes it easy to find previous discussions, blogs, podcasts, and other resources.

The rental market is still strong in Cincinnati, especially at the upper tiers.

For the last few days I have done some research for fixer uppers projects BRRRR, my lender recommended go for HELOC because we try to keep expenses downs and easy to access the funds.