You want to have the upper hand, not sound like they are doing you a favor by talking to you.

We are 3 guys in our early to mid 40's with very similar life situations: married, several kids, middle to upper middle class incomes doing real estate investment on the side starting with what might be a single family rental progressing to multi-family and hopefully eventually apartment complexes.  

@Mindy Jensen  As the others have mentioned, the market is definitely in the sellers favor in the upper middle to low price points.  

Look for fixer-upper bargains in up-and-coming neighborhoods.

@Steve Vaughan There are areas of the country where middle and upper-middle class will be affected negatively, where new standard deduction is not going to cut it.

We bought our asset in the upper 5 CAP range, which is low compared to other properties in that market, but it will work out to a mid 6 CAP or better range, once the inefficiencies are fully corrected.

So, even though I wasn't bidding against investors, my bid still needed to be in a certain price range to ensure I was in the upper echelon of bidders.What is your current strategy?

It needs $16,000 worth of repairs to the lower unit to be rent ready, the upper unit will be rented by my aunt at a fixed rate for the next 5 years. 

Though I was looking for better properties and not true fixer uppers.

You are not going usually going to get passive with 700k.You need usually about 80 to 100 doors or more and even if buying B or C product that might be 50k and up per door so minimum 4 million and up.Brand new builds are generally 100k a door and up.If you are accredited maybe you diversify and invest some and hold onto the rest.Of course if you did things yourself you might increase yield more but that is ACTIVE return and not PASSIVE.It seems like you really need to study whether you want to be active or passive and how you want to invest.