Project should take about 8 hours, and I'll pay a flat fee. 

Some companies charge a fee no matter if they collect rent or not (usually a lower flat fee) and some (I think most) charge a % based on what they collected.  

Personally this sounds insane, I would probably have done what the old owner did and just charge both a flat rate.

I made requests to the seller under our DD period and they flat out refused everything, even safety issues.

I'm looking at a property that is listed as a 2 flat; however when I went on the chicago zoning website, the zoning class is B3-1 which does not make sense since there is no retail currently.

My credit score is solid though.Is there anything that I am able to do >presently< to work my way into a 4 flat, house hacking situation or do I need to get some things done first before that is possible?

They have a flat fee model, check with @Ed Riggenbach.

This was essentially flat from the four-week period ending September 12.Asking prices of newly listed homes were up 11% from the same time a year ago to a median of $359,724, an all-time high.Pending home sales were up 6% year over year.New listings of homes for sale were down 6% from a year earlier.

I've received some flat out no responses without any reasoning.

You will likely need to hire a PM at some point which is another cost to bake into your return.Best of luck!!