When talking to a seller or realtor about a property before you get it under contract, they will give you an idea of the amount of repairs. That may even give you a range say $5000-$10000. You will be basing your offer on the higher number but the inspection will tell exactly how much repairs are needed.

When you get a property under contract you'll want to have it inspected by a rehab contractor to see what it'll cost to make any necessary repairs, if any are needed. You'll want to have the contractor use your form so if you get more than one estimate then everyone will submit their repair estimates on the same form. This makes it easy to compare apples to apples.

If the property needs a lot of work you may want to have a licensed home inspector look at it as well. The reason we don't do this is because the home inspector will charge to give you a report and it won't include an estimate on the amount of money it'll take to make the repairs. The rehab contractor on the other hand will give you a free estimate because they'll want to get the job and actually make the repairs.

If we're going to get a licensed home inspector to inspect the property we'll do that after our estimate from the contractor. We want to make sure that the rehab estimate is within budget before paying for an inspection.

When building relationships with rehab contractors and having them give you free estimates on your properties I want you to think about something. If you have a contractor go to over five properties to write up estimates and you don't end up buying any of them, you need to start paying them to do the next few estimates until you actually buy one and they get the job.

Remember to create win, win situations and don't wait until the contractor has to bring it up that they can't give you anymore free estimates because they haven't gotten any jobs out of it yet. You don't have to pay them much, maybe $100-$200, but once they get a job going with you then you can stop paying for the estimates again. If you feel like you need to get a licensed home inspector to perform an inspection then you can still get one but remember that they'll charge you for the report.

Remember to treat people the way that you want to be treated and you will always have plenty of people on your dream team to help you with your due diligence.