Someone on the verge of bankruptcy wouldn't be out looking at real estate and signing contracts to purchase.Now, if you're offering seller financing and someone declares bankruptcy, you're going to be treated like a creditor.  

As a buyer/investor you can blow as hard as you want trying to educate the guilty parties, but at the end of the day... you'll just be blue in the face and their rose colored glasses will continue tinting their outlook.  

You could use that situation to save up for the funds to purchase your next rental property.If you do plan to occupy the multi-unit while renting the other units out, look into an FHA loan which requires only a ~3.5% down payment so that you can keep more of your funds in your pocket to put toward the purchase of your next property as well.

A guy comes out, looks it over, paces off the building and says, "I'll send you a bid."

As you know, I don't buy notes for the cash flow at all, in fact we haven't got any yet, but the goal is a different reason.Your points dovetail with my basic outlook on owner financed notes, particularly those using the buy, rehab and sell with owner financing model. 

Just looking for general "outlooks" for similar houses.

If you go with this strong cash flower AND you have a long term outlook, THEN consider improving the odds of the neighborhood improving over time by becoming an advocate for the area surround your investment.

On a recent negociation with a local bank, I was able to clearly display all pertaining liabilities and assets, with a before and after outlook on both my end, and the bank's end.

If it's mainly debt it changes the outlook differently.

My current outlook on real estate is a buy-and-hold strategy that has been working just over a year now.