Also, you might reach out to a commercial broker in the area and see if they can give you the prevailing cap rate for the area and size/class of property, with that you might be about to get a feel for what other properties in the area are trading at and give you some more leverage for negotiating.

I am looking at standard 1% per month returns on capital employed

Local credit unions and banks of all sized will do that type of loan.

What complicates matters for me is I am licensed in California, and my employing broker doesn't allow me to do my own deals :( Since I can't represent myself as an agent, I thought about using the dual agency method.

I've seen beds, bath, size, and all kinds of things wrong on it that would make for lower appraisal likely just by updating it.One thing I don't understand is if our tax values have gone up 30% in the past 3 years or whatever...pick your number...then the city revenues are also likely to have gone up the same amount?   

With retail, good size units are 1500-3000 SF as there are a lot of users for these sizes. 

How are you going to dig out under a full size dumpster without moving it?

@Jilanie Staples, I hope it all goes well for you.First thing I would do is look at rents in the area for similar size and amenity places.

I have ~ $10k to put down on something to still have some $ in reserve just in case (currently employed for ~ $33k/yr).I'm driving around looking at various cheap properties in the area as I find them on Zillow and seeing large contrasts in the area -- what many of you would refer to as C- to D areas and some B to C as well.

@Arron Lloyd I have built up a good sized portfolio of sub2’s, at least a couple dozen of them have been preforeclosures.