It seems impossible to find any deals that would be worth my while.

Personally I think you could ask your previous partner to help you, from my understanding these issues are impossible to avoid if you chose wrong person, I assume in the end people are the most important assets in real estate investment, if you have had a good partner, you've got to use him/her.

And it was almost impossible to get insurance because of the big mold scare back then.

In some markets that's very hard if not impossible to reach but, in most markets you should be able to get 1% or better of purchase price in rent.

This makes getting a mortgage from in a conventional way impossible. 

The policy is based on the cost to rebuild, which whether it's 500 sf or 2000 sf, sticks and bricks cost the same.Probably not...though not impossible.

Some deals may show back up at that time.Don't know if my projections are correct but that is what I am going by.As far as locations go, it is damn near impossible to try to list it out here. 

I feel for you as I live in Northern NJ, and have similar super high pricing structure and the rent to price ratio makes it impossible to rent out in most areas of NJ. 

The reason is that it depends on so many factors that it is impossible to generalize.  

The building being a flat roof with no attic makes it impossible to do a good assessment.