I'm getting ready to get a property under contract, it's a 12-unit run down, beat up...basically a complete rehab top to bottom.Here's the story: In 2005 it was sold for $320,000 then in 2011 for $85,000 for some reason (I'm thinking the neighborhood) the owner of the property in 2011 listed it at 50k and it sold in 2014 a few months later it was sold again for 23k.The current owner is very open to negotiating price and even at 23k its well below every comp I've seen for the area-there are apartment buildings literally on the same street that have sold for around $135,000 is there something I'm not seeing? 

;)I too agree that $15k seems quite high....if it's a negotiation tactic with the seller, then good for you, but I'd guess you could get a quality tear off and new roof for half of that. 

My initial plan for negotiations is to find out more about where she plans to move and how much her expenses will be to relocate. 

Even cash on cash return to acquire, rehab, and costs to hold the property would be over 15% in the first year...I've negotiated the contract down with the seller by half and would of course pass that on to buyer.

Your purchase price is already negotiated so when you do go to sell you make the difference between that and your sale price. 

Also, would it make sense to get an appraisal done before negotiating a price, since I won't have an agent to approximate it for me?

Now we just have to finalize the negotiations (hopefully close by end of year), and rinse and repeat!

Turns out the hard part isn't actually finding the sellers its negotiating price. 

They all just wanted to know how much they could get for their property.I’m sure distressed multi-family owners are out there when the market’s hot, but obviously they will be much farther and fewer between than distressed SFR owners, both because there are so many more SFR owners and because multi-family owners, in general, are more sophisticated real estate-wise than SFR owners, most of whom aren’t investors at all.Maybe I didn’t spend enough on marketing or didn’t know what I was doing or how to negotiate, but that was just my experience.

Some can be negotiated or even purchased, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, thereby creating windfall equity.