Should I go to the realtor (which I am friends with) and try to negotiate a better price with the bank or offer my cousin the money to sign over the deed to me and bring the balloon payment ($25k) up to date, then renovate and sell.

When it comes time to 1031 into a larger property it's easier to sell the one building within the allotted time than trying to worry about 20 separate closings and this is before you take into account agent fees for all those buys and sales.There are also more options in commercial real estate.

Hello,  My husband and I buy one or two homes a year, renovate it and sell it.

We want to go for another real-estate investment (we are doing buy and hold..buy low, renovate and make them short term rentals on airbnb in Ocean City, Maryland).

How is the upstairs so much larger than the downstairs?

Instead of targeting keywords like "Property Management Company", try targeting the names of your larger competitors in the area who have higher advertising budgets.

  $100,000 asking price, plus $25,000 renovation = $125,000. 

I have done this numerous times with single-family properties, but is it common in larger multi-family properties?

We are in the process of growing our business in order to start speeding up our renovations and (in theory) bring in more profits annually.

I am not a realtor but I think the office, where you're going to be associated with, is going to play a big part.I've seen agents that focus on investing from the larger brokerage such as Remax, B&W, KW etc.