Seems like the city appraisal's are the foundation for seller price points.

We don’t feel as though these properties would work for fix and flip investors mainly because of the area but we are thinking of negotiating seller finance and putting about 3k into repairs and using them as rentals.

To get seller financing, so I need an agent, a bank, or just a simple contract?

A lease option to the seller for a short time might also work. 

In any case,   one argument FOR holding onto smaller apartment properties in seattle is that townhouse redevelopment,  which requires the same zoning as small multifamily causes a lot of SFR and smaller apartments to be lost to redevelopment,  so this class of neighborhood scale and typically comparatively affordable housing is going to get harder to come by,   and presumably in higher demand as a result.

This is not true - if you're going to represent buyers or sellers you have to have a license, but if you're going to be successful with Real Estate investing, you will be successful either with or without a license. 

I don’t have the contract or the warranty documents from seller unfortunately.

Finding sellers that NEED to sell their property?

As of right now, the seller has accepted my offer and my realtor is drawing up the contract.

a few days later the seller countered and we ended up buying the property for $110K.