Recent discovery of superconductivity in the nickelates has ignited renewed theoretical and experimental interest in the role of electronic correlations in their properties. Here, based on in-depth first-principles and many-body perturbation theory modeling, we show that the parent (undoped) compound of the nickelate family, LaNiO2, hosts competing low energy phases, unlike the undoped cuprates but similar to the case of the doped cuprates. We also show the existence of flat bands near the Fermi level, stemming from the Ni-3d z 2 orbitals, that are found to persist across the various predicted low-energy phases of the nickelates. Our study gives insight into the microscopic origin of electronic inhomogeneity and nematicity and lack of long-range order in the nickelates.