I manage almost 300 STR properties in CR and have some great contacts in-country with local knowledge on all things regulations and real estate.

I’ve identified my first multi-unit buy & hold property and plan to make an offer this week, fingers crossed everything goes well.With this multi-unit I’m required to put $40k down (25%), so going to have to take a $15k loan from a family member, paid back at 5% interest over 3 years.I’ll cash flow $200 total after mortgage and personal loan pay down, which will bump up to $600 after 3 years.

You're buying the future cashflows of the property so a corporate signature McDonald's is going to trade for a similar CAP rate across the country, all other things equal ( term remaining, scheduled increases, NNN or Absolute, etc.)If you are looking at some kind of local single or multi tenant building, then your local market will have a larger effect to factor for likelihood of replacing a tenant should they leave.

After about a month of living at the unit the seller stopped responding and had left the country.

It's also close enough that you can just pick up on a random day and go look at a bunch of properties, meet people, etc. and it could take only only a few hours (as opposed to flying halfway across the country).

Throw it out the window, start from scratch, every time you cross a state line.There are no federal property taxes the way there are federal income taxes, or how there's a federal minimum wage.

It's a free country.

Immediately upon crossing 23rd to the south or 30th to the north, conditions deteriorate, sometimes rapidly, however, intermittently to the south, one finds blocks of grand old homes restored to their former glory. 

For repairs, I'm guessing it would be straight forward (fingers crossed). 

However, you can cross reference the data with Google street view or similar source.