Now I just call or text agents and say hey, I'm a flipper, before I spend time and travel to go look at this listing, how flexible are your sellers?

bottom line is plan for the worse hope for the best. 

If needed (this shouldn't reallycome into play as plans are already being drawn)Keith Walker

Who is traveling there and for what reason would they be looking for a midterm rental?

this could be a good solution but you should still at least break even with LTRs as a backup plan. note that even a breakeven deal is only breakeven for a short time. rents go up, mortgage goes down. you could also start looking offmarket!

She and I will be keeping in touch and my plan is to buy in 1-2 years. 

A few of the reasons I’m planning to do this are. 1.  

I’m a real estate attorney who has helped clients with large master planned developments (single family, multi family, commercial).

The build costs have to correct or the land prices do, we don't have much of this inventory on the horizon either with the general plan.

My current plan is to schedule a basement specialist to come out and give a quote/inspection.