These are already past their life span.

It sounds like the brick veneer will need to be substantially removed by a brick mason and a qualified contractor will be needed to address proper support for repair for a 10.5 foot span on the entry.Question is: any idea how serious this can be and what a ballpark costs this would entail and strategy to deal with this with the seller?

It probably has 2x4 walls with 1 piece of plywood at the corners (maybe),  that spans 4' from the corner and black board or foil board between them.

It's cheaper than tile and seems have a durable life span and if an area gets screwed up some how, its easy to replace. 

You can look up span charts that will tell you the the length, width and spacing of joists for a live load of 40 pounds per sqaure foot or 40 psf which is basic residential code.

Much much better ROI buying out of state like 1ks of people from Ca  Can you reference a legit source (Core logic, case Shiller, neighborhoodScout, etc) that shows Cleveland has provided a better ROI for residential RE investing than Sacramento for any time span of 10 years or longer?

It's simply a short term rental with a slightly longer rental span.

I really wish I had more data - because it could be far more 'apples to apples' comparison.If I had 50 houses each with 50 years of data, then I'd look at the performance of all 50 grouped together for each of the last 50 years (portfolio performance year by year, kinda like a mutual fund w/ 50 stocks), and also look at how each of the 50 homes did over the span of 50 years (like 1 stock's performance over 50 years).

I've had to fire 3 agents in the span of a year since I started investing out there and I must say, having a bad agent upfront can cost you tens of thousands of dollars, even at $100k price point. 

In those cases if I took a tenant on getting rent in advance would be key due to fluctuating incomes that average out over a 12 month span.