I drive for dollars occasionally, but I don't believe it is yielding enough results as small multi's are not very common in my target areas.  

Drive the streets.

If you are getting a loan as a primary residence you must intend to occupy the property as your residence. if you buy and say you are buying it as your residence but the whole time you are planning to basically not live in it, that is  lying and could get you in trouble for mortgage fraud. you may not get caught, but if you do it is taken seriously, beside legal trouble lender could call the mortgage due if they found out you were lying.

Basically in order to really make a recommendation we need a bit more info.

Basically what @Tom Gimer said.

Unfortunately, this is driving bids much higher than they should be.

They can accept the offer and you get a good deal or they can reject it and you move on to the next one.If you are trying to do a flip or a wholesale deal then you may need to adjust the numbers but the basics are the same.

I don't know of any traditional mortgage lenders that will do or accept a drive-by appraisal - I have only seen hard money lenders do that

He's basically putting bleach water in a pump sprayer and shooting it around. 

Donnie, instead of reading forum posts that are scattered all over the place, you should try to find a book that explains the basics of real estate investing like how it works, why it's better than other forms of investing, how to fund it, how to manage it, etc.