OMG, please do  NOT take money out of your 401K to pay off a mortgage, especially not for a rental. 

Bottom line: the tenant doesn't get to decide how to pay you.

I was looking at an attractive rental but it looks like the land value is 75+% of the value, so I would be paying a ton get very little tax benefit. 

Land is only good if you have a warchest to immediately turn it from dirt to cashflow or sale so keep this in mind when you're going forward.

Yes you can, you're just selling like any other sale.

If the deal is right you can use hard/ private money to finance the home purchase and some or all of the repairs, then do a cash out refinance to pay off your hard/private money. 

What should I pay attention to if i was to get a property in this situation through an auction?

This is significantly lower than the mid west in the US.A really nice thing over there is that rents are often payed once per year.Dubai have a very consentrated power and decision organ which leads to very low predictability.

It may seem easy to jack up rent but there is something to be said about good, on-time paying tenants.As an accountant, I always rely on the numbers.

If you pay a lot you get the cover and bifold..