Once you have a property under contract you can take advantage of the inspection period to get a professional GC and/or inspector into the property to evaluate the condition of the entire building, including the floor. 

Would one be more or less specific in its evaluation of worth?

Evaluating the ARV ?

So unless, your commercial lender is comfortable with the new 12 month leases and stabilized properties based on such future forecasts, you will be evaluated at previous ARV.

Then you could lose all credibility with this property owner and they avoid you and tell all of their friends from then on to ignore you.This is classic (want to be a wholesaler) syndrome but it sounds like you do not know the commercial retail market, how to evaluate these types of properties, what buyers are looking for, etc.If you still are to meet this owner you might want to spend day and night reading up on the topic.That is a very generous offer by Greg as time for professionals in this field can be thousands of dollars per hour.

This is where the Cap Rate's real value comes into play; it can be helpful but it isn't as useful as things like IRR or CoC returns for evaluating properties.

Evaluate the homes yourself. 

If you really want to evaluate this business, you need to be sure it's profitable, even if you get it for free. 

You should evaluate all your applicants based on income and credit scores and apply this uniformly, regardless of race, religion, origin, familial status, disability, or sex of the applicant. 

I want to know specifically any insight anyone might have that would give me some clarity of perspective on what I can do to start acquiring property and becoming better at deal evaluating