The way I got into Real Estate investing was by doing A LOT of research and investigating.

My property research has also been primarily limited to MLS listings as I haven't yet investigated other acquisition methods.I'm finding the market is picking up steam.

You can investigate into it yourself (I believe IRA has tons of info on their website)  or, if you want to save money and possibly avoid making mistakes, there is a number of specialists/companies in US who have systems in place to have your corporate credit ready for borrowing in as little as 1 year.

Depending on the context, it might be wise to obtain and Phase I Environmental Report from a local qualified  engineering firm that does such investigations and reports.  

The difficulty from what I see is that these sorts of scams are mostly small and local police are ill equipped to investigate and prosecute especially since most of the criminals are not local.

They have been doing this for a couple of years now and soon they will be investigated for unethical and overhyped promises of crazy returns especially when investors cannot cash out like a couple of people I know who are now stuck and cannot get over $500,000 invested there and have had zero returns. 

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/20/news/companies/trump_university/index.htm?section=money_mostpopular

I don't think you'll have cash-flow while you're living in the triplex, but you might pay less in monthly expenses because a lot will be covered by the other $1950 you get from the tenants in your property.It also seems like the area you're investigating is a B class or better area, where you will end up with lower ROI for the higher desirability and stability of the neighborhood. 

Investigate and find out why.

And now he's gotta deal with a big handful of complaints of hopefully a routine investigation from fannie mae just to make sure they didn't pull a fast one.