My husband and I want to purchase a home from his grandmother who has a POA (Husband’s brother) due to her age (95) and condition.

The one caveat being only if it is in really bad shape and needs to be cleaned up.Is it in good condition? 

That's a great question, and I think you nailed the issue - there's not a standard definition/criteria beyond it can be rented in current condition.

Depending on the condition of your property, you'll have a builder's risk policy, vacant house policy, and finally a landlord policy (basically the landlord version of a homeowner's policy). 

If you buy a property in barely rentable condition and charge $600 rent, then you update it significantly and then charge $800 rent, should your estimate for repair costs increase or decrease?

Between the lease, lead pamphlets, lead disclosure, move in conditions checklist, I feel like I have allot of papers here.

Depending on your hold plan, current condition/age of property, interest rates, and plenty other variables, I know plenty of people who still cash flow well without hitting 1%. 

For my first real estate investment I have access to the funds that would allow me to put 20% down on 2 or 3 $200,000ish Condos.The Condo’s are in good condition and would not need any rehab.Is it smart, stupid, wise, unwise if I purchased the Condos with a 20% down, and rented them out at a proper rental rate (which would be a few hundred dollars higher than the mortgage)???

I'm in the process of trying to get this done soon to eliminate that concern.My issue with the garage is, most houses in my sub-dividson have fully functional garages, so I would like to use this property as a lesson's learned and take the projected $80k that I may make on this home if I do sell it and use that money to invest in another property that is in better condition when the market is better for buyers 1-2 years down the road.I will also potentially be moving away (over 8 hours away) from this area in about 2 years, so another reason I'm looking to maybe sell since it can be hard to find great property managers.Anyway, this is my first rental property, so I just wanted to pick the brains of others since I have a limited small view of things and maybe missing the big picture on why I should hang on to it.Note, I have been lucky enough to have 2 different tenants rent this home out since I renovated it, but after moving out, they love the house but did mention dislikes about the garage doors and basements when we asked for things they would recommend for improvement.Thanks!

We're kind of speaking in hypotheticals here and it's always hard because we don't know the property value, purchase price, condition of the shop, cost estimates, etc.Good luck!