Looking to buy first property next year, would love some advice!

[Kevin Liu]

Hi everyone,

I'm 25 and have always been interested in real estate investing. I work full-time in tech and don’t have a background in real estate, but I’ve been reading books like BRRRR and others to get familiar with the world of REI.

My goal is to buy my first property by the summer of 2026. I’ve been saving for the past few years and should have around $130K by next summer.

I have a few questions and would love to get your advice:

1) Do you think $130K is enough to buy and rehab SFH properties in the Indianapolis market? I've been browsing Zillow and see some SFHs around $100K, but a lot of them were built before the 1940s. I'm assuming those would need pretty heavy rehabs?

2) I'm open to other types of REI projects too. If you think my budget would be better suited for something else, I'm all ears.

3) How do you estimate rehab costs? At what point in your research process do you start crunching numbers? I've been looking at Zillow , and often they don't have good pictures and no floor plans attached. How do you work around that when you're trying to run numbers or use rehab calculators?

Thanks so much for any advice you can share!

[Drew Sygit]

@Kevin Liu why would you associate year built with a heavy rehab?

99% of properties built in the 1940s would have had something updated in the last 80 years!

So, your $130k should allow you to pay all cash for acquisition + rehab.

You can come pretty close on rehab estimates from square footage of house and interior pics - if you have enough experience. 

Your other option is to find a contractor you can PAY to give you rough estimates with an corresponding walk-thru video to prove they were there. You can try to find contractors to do this for free, but after 2-3 free estimates, they will all stop taking your calls.