What are the easily rentable areas and I hope to flip them after holding for sometime for cash flow if needed.What are the expected return on investment on typical rent for 2 bed apartment?

Don't accept anything from them, some people can easily produce fake tax returns.

The retail space is ugly but the lay out is good and it could easily be setup with 4 offices with a nice waiting room.

You may also have a professional network that can more easily be leveraged.

Ceramic tile typically is much more costly to install, and can fairly easily be cracked or chipped.

After the auction if a bank buys the property back you can always make an offer to them and get a loan... but in these cases the bank will hold out for more money whereas in a short sale situation you can more easily negotiate for a lower price.As an alternative to getting a loan for youself you can offer to buy a house "subject to" the original loan.

Both programs has restrictions but if you carefully do all the calculations can be done easily. 203K loan can be used if the property is not in livable condition. 

You can do this very easily in Lansing. 

@Richard Poitras The tools are in dollars, but I think you could easily convert your final number to Canadian currency. 

when you say things you need to “not like” is very broad in scope— are you stating many investors who do this tactic could easily use the inspection to get out of an offer?