In the past year, we started a renovation to add the second bathroom but ran out of funds (this is an attic conversion and our contractor was way low in his estimate).

Make sure your agent communicates the reasoning why your offer is low (extensive renovations are needed, place is old, layout needs work, building permits needed, etc.). 

I guess you would need some one to crawl up on the roof and make sure its OK.. but basically I have not seen more bullet proof rentals that all those row houses I have been funding in Philly and BALT... much much easier that 4 walls and larger roofs et. 

I could go with a HELOC (30 years) and have a larger line and bigger cash-flow but I don't like the floating rate in the current market and I don't currently need more cash.

Also, if you are buying older, non-renovated multies you'll want to thoroughly assess things like current condition and needed work (since such a large % of inventory here is from early 1900s etc).

So here’s my situation..I am about to graduate college and will be working in my field full time in order to be approved for a mortgage and financing to pay for renovations for my first flip.

It's popular in certain ways because it's somewhat more affordable than 37206.Depending on what you do and how nice you make your renovation, you should be able to sell it pretty quickly if it's priced right. 

I’m looking to use hard money lending to get the property and to renovate.

Maybe you could offer larger earnest money and if you are comfortable do your inspection when viewing the property so you could waive inspection. 

One thing that I read/hear again and again is that going into buy and hold, you really do want a larger financial cushion.