I am thinking maybe getting something on the cheaper side and remodel it, (although I have zero experience in doing that and I don’t think the bank will give me extra money to do the remodeling).

BiggerPockets is a great place for that, although always trust but verify.I recently spoke with an investor in the U.K. who owns a property in Cleveland and he got burned by his property managers.

You need an experienced short sale agent, which may be hard to find for the extra work on such a small price/commission.  

I'd be inclined to tell your neighbor to buy extra units for your multi & you'll split the take 50/50 & he installs & maintains the appliances. 

In most markets there are limited amounts of the distressed sellers, so they will burn them through pretty fast.

It may sound nice to pay a 5% management fee but the extra fees can add up to be more than the other company that charges 10% with no add-on fees.

Trying to reverse engineer making an extra $30,000 by the end of this year.What formula are you all using?

Aside from multiple ongoing code violations, neighbor complaints and damages, they moved in extra people/pets, tried to scam the utilities, stopped paying rent and ultimately had to be evicted. 

(It's not always as easy as "just create another LLC", sometimes due to time/logistical limitations and sometimes due to the extra ongoing expense & complexity of another entity.)These days, I actually think I prefer LLC names as generic and boring as possible, so they don't stand out and aren't easy to Google - a kind of pseudo-anonymity.

Some people may cost more, but a few extra dollars is well worth it in the long run.