Suppose it is a matter of doing enough due diligence on an area or acquiring a property with a good tenant who hopefully is content with where they are at.You are correct about multi-family - there are not a lot of deals out there because there are a lot of people looking and money is cheap. 

They only do money orders though correct?

Take this with a grain of salt because I did no reading of this myself and not sure if I remember her words correctly but I think the requirement is you live in the same place for 5 years to get that grant.

We have funds to most likely close one our first and maybe second properties without getting into residual debt if we can BRRRR correctly.

We had a discussion with her about this in July of this year and spent 4 hours pulling weeds and correcting the issue then.  

@Tim LaBelle You are correct, we are not quite as agressive as most of the costal cities, but like Rebecca said the North Shore is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Milwaukee, properties in good condition go fairly fast, typically in days and we have seen some solid appreciation in the last years.

@Ned Carey is correct that there are many properties in that price range that will rent for at least 1k. 

Value-add from increasing NOI through various methods of increasing income (below market rents, rehab and increase rents, RUBS, etc) or decreasing expenses.

I would recommend a different marketing piece every 4 weeks for 5-7 months from past data analysis, but you should test this out for your market and see what works best response rate wise.Also, when you become more advanced you will want to do split testing and other methods.

If my thinking is wrong there then please correct me!