Estimating rehab costs?

[Nirzhar Kar]

so I finished reading the book on estimating rehab costs but the information there is very very specific. Remembering or using all that might be work I would do later for a more specific cost layout but is there anyway to guesstimate prices a bit faster and easier? Maybe in in terms of rooms/jobs instead? I want to be able to walk room to room and guesstimate how much Reno would be. Especially here in New Jersey.

For example, plumbing, electrical, mold , kitchen gut, bathroom gut, hard wood floors , painting, and etc... basically a quicker way of estimating these numbers to figure out if I should invest in a house or not. I understand it's hard to figure out these numbers since all houses are different and some of the problems might not be shown until Reno. But even for that I can have a range of possible Reno cost ( say plumbing can be anywhere between x and x price.

I will be hiring a general contractor so a lot of the actual specific things I need to know will probably be taken care of by the contractor who I will tell to make sure he has  multiple bids per jobs.  So is in that case is knowing the SOW important since the general contractor will be in charge of doing all the renovation. I could see it being useful if I was the one who was hiring all the specific contractors to do the job.

I am assuming all this is for a 1000 -2000 sq ft house (usually 2 floor colonials)