The only thing I can think is that this house was a REO that had a decent sized hole in the roof (big enough that when it rained a small stream of water literally came through what was left of the ceiling).

Is your radio show podcasted or streamed?

Put simply You get much more bang for your buck on multi families VS SF.Take a 4 family for example: you are getting 4 income streams while paying taxes, insurance on one property.

Forgot to mention after the tenants have been there awhile and become attached to the place from you being a good landlord you can raise the rents closer to market but not at the top.It will cost them so much to move and first and last month down along with security deposit.So they will weigh this versus paying another 50 or 60 bucks a month in a years time.Most tenants will opt to stay as they do not have THOUSANDS of extra cash today to move to save 50 a month.They do however usually have the ability to cover an extra 50 a month rather than move.It just depends on who your tenant base will be.If the tenants are lower income expect more moving and higher amounts of trash each week from hand me downs.They constantly get hand me downs and they only last for a short time so you get a bunch of old TV's,couches,beds,tables,etc. that need to be thrown in the trash.They are not supposed to but they will be dumped at your big trash bin or if you have small ones will be left on the road.You have to make sure you can get bulk pick up for your area.Could go on forever.For your first one you might want to buy one semi-performing before taking this on.The downside there is it will take awhile before you can get bad tenants out before performing the rehab but the upside is usually rehab costs are less than a totally vacant building.Good Luck

Secondly if you have a customer service# I start to get suspicious when I call that # all hours of the day and night and it is constantly busy.

Looking for more income streams so I plan on looking at all cash flow opportunities not just related to real estate.

What are investors paying for income streams in the area?

For the upper, though, I'm thinking that carpet is almost a necessity as the lower tenant will constantly hear every step the upper tenant takes.

Mark is right about the delayed aggregated systems... they do suck and there isn't a replacement for having real time access (and a personal assistant who monitors the new listings constantly).

Banks are looking for stabilized assets these days and typically require a running occupancy of 85% or better for 3 or more months in a row so that is worth mentioning.That's not to say that you might not be able to get around that if you have other income streams to mitigate the bank's risk, but if the occupancy is low you're looking at hard money more than conventional financing.