Estimating Renovation costs

[Twesh Chowdhury]

Starting out at looking at potential properties for buy-and-hold rentals. It looks like for my budget in my area (North NJ) I'll have to stick to the lower end properties. Looks like EO, Newark are neighborhoods I can tackle for my first purchase. I'm taking a browse at houses in the 150-200k range and looks like almost all of them will need major rehabs.

Cosmetic/interior repairs are easy to identify and come up with a ball-park number. But how about the more hiddens - electrical work, plumbing, roofing etc. ?

Could someone share a strategy they use when estimating rehab costs?