No judgements here, but I wouldn't pay either one before seeing a unit; that seems ridiculous to me unless it is a very large multifamily building that would have other rentals come open.  

I've gotten different suggestions: either conduct a basic remodel of the kitchen and bathroom, or undertake an extensive gut and remodel and convert the kitchen + living room to one large open space (that came from one of the GC's who does flips in the area). 

The easy way to scale it is one or two months as a security deposit.

And keep our properties free and clear to keep that large amount on cash- flow coming in ?

Is it a large bank, a commercial lender, a small bank, an individual?

1. little to no economies of scale.

why not speed this up and buy a large portfolio instead??  

Some places you can get away with 2% of purchase price all in for closing costs, other places such as where you have a large amount for transfer fees, you could go as high as 10%.  

So i'm acquiring my units at a large discount.  

Not my cup of tea, but Boston has a lot of great things going for it that in the long run I think you could make it work.If by multi-family though you mean a 5+ building that you're presumably going to look for in the Midwest or South...it's in its own bubble as a disturbingly large number of people who made bank in the last 10 years of the up market are shifting their focus to a larger scale asset and are purchasing these distressed properties which is driving cap rates down because people need a place just to park their cash.