I recently heard a story about a Real Estate Agent going to check out a duplex for a client and he was told to leave after a man carrying a gun said to leave the neighborhood.

@Carrie HerrmannI'm not an advertising expert, but you should do whatever your competition isn't doing.

You would also want your tenants to carry "Renters" insurance and list you as the additional interest on that policy.If you will not be occupying it right away and the duplex will in fact still be tenant occupied on both sides, then you need a landlord policy. 

Tell him you could offer him FMV for his home if he is willing to carry a note.

We sold a property like that early this year, the buyer put down 10k and we carried the note for 35k.  

This is not the only money you will need, can't forget about closing costs, carrying costs, and rehab costs when formulating what is and is not a feasible plan of attack on an investment.Like I said Cap Rate does not really apply to anything smaller than a fourplex, people bend the rules and like to use it as a shortcut for figuring out value, however small multifamily and SFH fall under a different valuation generally.  

@Bruce McNeil- Depending on the quality and location of the homes you could possibly find a private lender on here who would be willing to carry a note on them.

Start with a small multi flip using hard money (or a combination of my money and hard money) and then trade up to bigger multis (1031 or carry over the note) until I reach the kind of cash that the bank or lender would consider as enough skin in the game to lend me the rest.4.

If you don't have other passive income to off set, you may carry over your loss to next year.  

And thank you for the words of caution - it's easy to get carried away with all these ideas, and the reason to actually engage on these forums vs. lurking is to give people like you and Jay the opportunity to express caution where it's needed.Thank you all again, I'm looking forward to learning more!