from the documents a few BP folks sent to me a few years ago. it looked like they were investing in multi beneficiary mortgages IE multiple investors in a fractionalized mortgage.. which can be argued is a security .. in CA they are quite common but you have a specific disclosure document that must be filled out by a real estate broker .. it lets you know who the co investors are.. which is really the rub here.. none of these folks know each other.. and of course this is always the rub in a pooled syndicated investment that goes south.. 

The unit is over 50 years old and I’m planning on having quite a bit more maintenance than I’m used to and having to do quite a bit of remodeling while i have vacancies, as there is good potential for increasing rents.

All in I've got about $150k to start putting to use.My plan is to take my job remote (or quit if not successful) and move back home.

In the same world (maybe a different city or maybe a slightly nicer part of town), another person is putting up a similar place in terms of age, size, condition, etc for $1600/mo and uses $160 as the allotment.This is quite a different amount of money for two properties that may require similar maintenance costs.I do it quite differently on my properties and am always looking to understand everyones point of view ... 

Handled quite a few of those. 

I'm interested in purchasing a multi-family property (live in one unit, rent out the other) and was playing around with the calculator, but I get the feeling the property I'm interested in is not a good deal (that and/or I'm messing up the numbers because I definitely left quite a few fields blank).

You could have her "quit claim" it over to you but that isn't a clean way to do it.

Matt, thanks, but you don't quite understand Baltimore.

Despite the fact that I only owned an 8 unit building (purchased last year) and had never used Agency financing, it took us just over three months from application to close.It was quite an experience but I had good assistance from the folks at Red Capital on the Freddie financing - they walked me through a lot of the process and gave me a good idea of what I needed to do. 

I don't think this investment is quite as safe as you think it is.