Yucca Valley, CA BRRRR- Rehab Q's

[Taylor Lorei]

Hello BP!

I'm a newbie and this is my first post, so I guess I'll make a quick introduction! 

My name is Taylor, I live in LA and am looking to grow my wealth by BRRRR'ing with hard lenders, starting with SFR or small multis and growing from there. Being in LA, I'm looking into OOS and other places in SoCal (basically out of state, hello traffic).

I'm from the Yucca Valley area originally and am looking there to start, thinking that starting with something in an area I'm somewhat familiar with/can visit somewhat easily would be a more comfortable way to start. But overall I'm not too afraid of going OSS. 

My biggest source of discomfort at the moment is estimating rehab costs. That's why I'm thinking about the YV area, or nearby, to start so that I can do a walkthrough with a contractor to get a feel for that process. 

My question is- at what point should you do a walkthrough with the contractor? I don't have experience rehabbing or in construction, so I'd want a well done, conservative rehab estimate before I make an offer. 

I want to do the walk through with the contractor so I can gain the experience to be able to estimate it myself for analysis purposes. If I want to be able to estimate the rehab on my own, I would have to pay for the walkthrough first without being under contract, which could obviously prove to be fruitless, but would be good experience nonetheless. If I wait until I have the property under contract, theres a chance I underestimated my rehab when I did it during my original analysis. 

That's a lot of words for probably a simple question so I apologize for the length, and thank you for being patient with my newbie Q's! 

Any advice is welcome, and if anyone has rentals in the area feel free to chime in! I'm looking for a good agent out there who works with investors as well, any leads with that would be helpful.

I'm excited to be a part of this community, and look forward to experiencing the process for myself and connecting with like minded people. Thanks in advance for any advice!