I have one in my sights and am in communication with the very motivated owner.

What sort of shape is the building in- does it need a roof, HVAC, etc or are you just upgrading the interiors?

Account Closed YOu need to be a CA broker to manage property you do not own.but if its family property you can probably set up some sort of arrangement that will be just fine..

And I'm sort of at a standstill right now because of the sellers market. 

A multi unit near a college, with what sort of price range.

Account Closed mentions as his experience - once a property makes the above list, only 10-15% of them fall out before auction.You are not likely to get a callback of any sort from any of the trustees.

Just like houses, you can find motivated sellers of cars.

How extensive is this sort of repair?  

Of course not, but if it comes to that you want to make sure you are still making some sort of profit.

This is sort of a weird question but bear with me......I work for a builder and am also an investor on one of our projects - we do new construction spec builds in higher end areas usually between 1M-2M......we've been sitting with our house a little longer then we expected at this point - we dropped the price 70,000 from the initial listing price and am contemplating our next move if we don't get bites in the next couple weeks....my question is how much of a drop is worthwhile?