Getting Ready to Buy My First Property

[Harrison Harner]

I've been renting for my first 5 years out of college and investing in my landlords' futures. I'm an engineer in the commercial construction industry moving from Boston to CT in 6 weeks and want to start investing. 

My current plan is to invest in my personal residence by buying a rehab, living in it during construction for about 2 years, with a large amount of the work done myself, then selling and repeating. I plan to go with traditional financing and an agent for the sake of simplicity on my first purchase. I am looking for a deal that is 70% of ARV minus rehab costs and I know that calculating ARV and rehab costs accurately are very important.

Although I feel like I don't even know enough to ask the right questions yet, I want to start asking questions early and avoid learning things the hard way. Are there other investment options/strategies I should consider? What are points of failure that I might overlook?