I forgot to include this within my original post, but my reasoning for considering the apartment unit over the single family home to begin with was due to my limited cash on hand to support the needed 20% down on a single family home that is traditionally higher in asking value ( north of $150k ) than apartment units.

The typical banks could care less, the employees are lazy, red tape, I have 800 FICO score, I would never get loan through traditional bank again.

If you do not have much reserves to survive on then you generally do not want to focus on traditional residential sales driving buyers all over creation and expending your resources.

I'm new at investing so looking for clarification from some of the more seasoned investors.With your traditional sandwich lease option, I’m assuming that when it comes time for the buyer to close, the investor (me) needs to do a double or simultaneous close, correct?

Traditional brokers are not creative and they don't understand these things.Best bet, try and find an independent agent or search for "Flat Fee MLS  your area" and get a local guy.  

I'm curious if anyone here has actually had any luck in pulling off this scenario.Small community bank is selling an apartment complex - in this case its 14 units.Instead of a traditional sale, they simply assign the property to an investor (Me) for say 5% down payment and at a good rate.  

The "price" of a piece of improved real estate can be re-characterized as the cost of attracting an owner, which takes into consideration all the neighborhood characteristics traditionally affecting the price of real estate.

Look outside the traditional lenders.  

My student rental turnover is considerably higher compared to traditional rentals and not uncommon for the majority of units to only have tenants for 1 year.  

generally, motivated sellers cant wait 30 to 45 days for traditional financing.