My recommendation would be to get approved as a Landlord, contact the director's office and request that an inspection be completed before a tenant is selected (sometimes they will do this as long as you select a tenant within 14 days - which you want anyways), and have an online application and screening resource in place.  

I also looked at hundreds of deals online and visited over a dozen properties before I landed on this 8 unit.

I do SMS, cold call, mail, online, wholesalers, etc.

To me that is requires major compliments, and the review I posted is not appropriate.They really are going above and beyond in this circumstance and its not fair to them to keep this post online just because I wasn't able to reach them and discuss this over the weekend right after new years.PLEASE reconsider taking the post down.

My research to date is leaning towards 2 - 4 MF along the lines of a "fixer upper". 

Reliability of Regrid Zoning InformationIs the zoning data provided by Regrid accurate and up-to-date for development planning?

My crime prevention class was canceled and I’m looking for an update on the rescheduled date.

Networking, local meetups, door knocking, mailers, wholesalers, online forums specific to your area of interest.  

When the date came he said he wasn't going to submit it by the online app (stipulated in the lease) but would have it in cash and that we could come pick it up (we live 3 hours away). 

I’d love to hear about the crime rates or any other issues (which we cannot guess from the online stats), and how easy or hard it is to find reliable tenants and property management companies.