Advice on Estimating Rehab Costs in NJ

[Tyler Holzer]

I'm looking to get my first rental property soon near Cherry Hill, and am reading The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott. In the book, he mentions that rehab costs can be higher in states like NJ and NY. I plan to use the costs outlined in the book to estimate rehab, but does anyone have any advice on how much extra I should be budgeting for my rehab costs considering it's an expensive market? Naturally, I'll verify final numbers with a contractor, so I just plan to use this for my preliminary analyses. Thanks for any advice!

[Jonathan Greene]

You can't use the book as a guide to costs in NJ in any way. It's a guide to how to flip, not the costs. And you can not use price per square foot in NJ either. As others said, even though now I see this is old, you need to either know rehab or have a contractor willing to help in advance of getting your business, which is very tough right now.