Advice on Analyzing My First Rental Deal

[Tyler Holzer]

I am gearing up to buy my first house-hack in South Jersey, but am running into a snag with my analysis! I'm using an FHA and buying off the MLS, it's going to be pretty straight-forward - I'm not expecting giant cash flow, but I'm looking to get my feet wet.

I hear all the time in the podcast to analyze a bunch of deals, but I feel like the huge variable I'm always missing is an estimated rehab budget. I think the rest of the numbers are relatively easy to access, but I don't see another way of analyzing the deal besides getting an offer accepted and physically getting contractors and inspectors in the property. While that's well and good, I feel like that's really late to analyze the rehab budget. Maybe that's standard practice to wait that long on a deal like this, I just don't know. Basically, do I have to wait that long to figure out if it's a good deal? Any advice?