This method has worked well for me, never have to worry about any legal issues with rejecting tenants and have never had a property sit empty for more than a week. 

Have a list of about 10 companies and numbers, sit down and call each one, one after another until you get a bite.

The buyers really start drying up with a high MSI and you can end up sitting on even nice houses for a long time.If you are a buy and hold investor for rentals we usually save cash or do flips when the MSI is low and when it gets higher we start looking for prices to drop and that is the time to start picking up rental properties for the long term.I have looked at many different indicators, price change, sales volume, etc. but none of them really seem to correlate to performance for a property better than MSI. 

One month into the autumn academic semester and many of those "dives" are sitting empty, while we are full (we even had to turn students away this year).So, you can compete with the big boys ... just find a way to differentiate yourself (never do this on price, you will always lose) and you will do fine.

So I hopped on Google maps street view for some more clues about the condition - the house sits on lot perpendicular to the street.

I mean from what I am perceiving, the 2-4 units have much lower (buy & sell) turnover and typically (at least on the open market) the units are sitting out there for many months or even years without much price adjusting.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful but if the location is bad the owner is going to have to get more motivated or its going to sit unsold for a while, imo.

If I bought it subject to, assuming he has a 5% loan, I could pay $80-$81K and still wholesale it for $5K.But I'm not in your market and my buyers don't buy where you are.As for his asking price, every time a seller tells me what they want, I think about what I want; and that is to wake up and find a brand new high end sports car sitting in the 5 car garage of my 5,000 sq/ft house with a large in-ground swimming pool (I don't really want any of that, but it is just to prove a point).

I've been sitting on the sidelines too long, it's time to contribute!

I've stopped rehab work on it since the city won't give permits to finish the interior back to a 5-unit because of the zoning and the work is going to cost a lot more than anticipated so the property is sitting gutted and just a cash drain.