This is a rust belt town, mortgages come in that size around here all the time! I have friends that their first mortgage was 17,000, and that wasn't too long ago, early 2000's I think. When houses aren't worth very much in an area the banks adapt.
Our house would be worth 400k in many areas, but in our town it's worth maybe 150K. That's 1 acre, 4 bedroom 2.5 bath ranch with a finished walk out basement and a few outbuildings. To help with perspective a bit.
The triplex is currently rented for reasonable rents for this area, and in pretty good condition. Each unit has 2 bedrooms, but the layouts are a bit odd. $450 per unit is market in this area for what they are. I only put $2k initial repairs because I know how houses are!
You're correct, we are newbies looking at land-lording, but we are definitely not newbies at fixing up houses. We've done everything in our house from flooring and carpentry to plumbing and electrical. We have a pretty good idea what things cost to DIY and to hire out. We renovated our 1,000 sq ft basement area ourselves for less than $10K. That included flooring, building a bar, replacing everything in the kitchen expect the appliances, building new walls, and buying furniture. We're pretty good at being frugal and yet getting a well built and attractive result.
We truly aren't sold on either property, but both have many good points, and some less than good points. I hope we're not going to jump into something that's a bad choice, but neither of these would bankrupt us if things didn't go well. We are still looking for other properties in the area, but don't want to be long distance landlords.