This means always holding adequate reserves to protect yourself against project delays, extra time on the market, or cost overruns, and if you're flipping, buying with enough equity cushion up front to safely handle potential market shifts.

You can’t always prevent overruns, but knowing about them in real time gives you a chance to adjust your strategy or even recoup some costs at resale.It’s also important to keep your bookkeeping current from purchase through resale so you know where you are throughout the project.As for the contingency, I recommend estimating renovation costs using a range for each line item on your punch list, then leaning toward the higher end of that range.

I used DIY cost seg and was happy with the results.Chania?

What's the average monthly PROFIT from each rental you're estimating? 

The variability of your renovation costs probably far exceeds the accuracy you might get from your model and your model probably only contains a guess at the renovation costs.

If you are just getting started and don't have much cash or income, you'll likely need to find deals where you don't leave much (or any) money in the deal and it needs some cash flow.

Quote from @Nicholas Cavato: Each deal is a learning lesson even if you win on the deal, or you lose on the deal.

Hi everyone, I’m currently looking at a deal for two separate duplexes being sold together for $450K total.

So equity in the note was $650,000.Essentially this $650,000 net equity in the note cost us $450,000 in “forgone” cash.The monthly interest we received was $10,700.

I can't speak on personal experience but you will definitely get more cash flow (or should) in nearly all major metro markets.The cons are that you need to have leases for each resident.