Try to identify what is causing that higher OPEX %.

I would not ever put myself in your shoes or try to understand your situation - what I am sharing is that sometimes it is best to look for a solution that creates the best win/win and look at what you could lose (from all angles) after you identify all the routes you can take.

I have a couple partners one of which owns land.  Can we build a fourplex on it then get conventional financing?  I think we will have some equity build in after the build and I want to use it for at least part of the...

They are discussing pre approved financing, package deals, fix and flip, and even development potential ! 

One landlord I know who keeps the water bill in his name has developed his own system that trains the tenant on how to read the water meter, and to take the reading to compute how much to include with the rent for the water bill; it gets close enough so that he has not fronted the water payment for a tenant who decides to skip town.If you have the tenant get the water bill where unpaid water bills become a lien, you will want to have some way of tracking that the tenant is paying the bill.

I'll also look for development and competition. 

Most experts also feel that if you turn a shovel after entitlements that involves you creating inventory and turns you into a developer. 

Development - Construction Forum  Strategies is where you will find all the various niches. 

It can be a challenge when searching for a 203k consultant, a contractor, and a lender that have 203k experience and a good agent can guide you through this.If you can, have the contractor and the 203k consultant walk the house together so they can develop a report with each other if they do not already have one.

But to be honest, it takes about 10 minutes for an agent to write an offer, especially if you identified the property and know what price you want to offer at.