Who knows how reliable they were before, but if they've gotten comfortable living rent free, my guess is you'll have some hurdles with them, and perhaps some demands for repairs.

Can someone help me come up with a mutually beneficial solution for the sellers as well as my situation? 

I find the older properties to be a unique niche as it takes a decent amount of knowledge to develop solutions to some of the issues these older properties bring up.

Weeds, bedsheet curtains, screaming kids at all hours - I'm not sure what the solution is.

While I could have replaced a leaking component in my 12 year old HVAC system I decided to replace the system with a more efficient, quieter and reliable (I hope) new installation. 

Set your budget at $500, and there are many fine and reliable options for a CCW sidearm.

I have done a trial membership on property radar and found it to be helpful, but I was wondering how reliable people think their title and lien info is.  

You will find that will a very well reseached and well managed fund, you can achieve consistent and reliable double digit returns, which is going to be very competitive if not exceed your return on SF investments in most situations.  

That is a slow route but if done correctly you don't need your own additional cash for every deal.Two other possible funding sources are a business line of credit (once you've built your business and develop a relationship with a lender), or find a private lender to provide acquisition funds.In sum, I don't see a method of obtaining a conventional mortgage on investment properties in need of rehab.There's a networking group meeting tonight so maybe someone there knows the solution....Best of luck. 

So now that I've called BS, can you provide a link to a reliable source to support that claim?