Uhhhh,  the PROPER tool would probably be a flat floor scraper,  It is about 6" wide and a 5 foot handle. 

@Jonathan Widing Welcome to BiggerPockets!

A home with a  mother in law setup has many advantages - younger people don't mind sharing space and renting rooms out so it could could work for younger millennials - but more to the point - you have a lot of families where the parents are moving into their children's homes to be closer to family and to be taken care of - on the other side of that you have record number of young people moving back into their parents home - so a SFR with an in-law unit built into it should prove attractive to a wide range of buyers.

Rookie wide eyed and ready to soak up what I can.  

Financing van vary widely, from Conventional or FHA to private and hard money. 

More equity is favorable,   larger housing is preferred (I would say houses with a minimum of 20 feet wide  x45 feet deep is preferable for fix/flip.    

There's some sort of regulatory requirement that the property be widely advertised, so they couldn't just sell it to you.

Thanks for your advice so I will also do it with eyes wide open.  

worst yet when i go to the zEstimate link, it takes me to a totally different property listing in another state.when i google image search my home's photos, i find them on a wide array of apartments for rent listings nationwide, multiple states!

I recently went to an extensive VA Benefits seminar and heard several times from the representative that VA loans are available for any Soldier, serving or ETS or retired, as long as the loan does not exceed the cap for that respective area as well as total cap for one person to have. . .