My first BRRR and the mistakes I made

I am in the middle of my first attempt at implementing the BRRR strategy. I've bought and rehabbed. I just listed for rent. In roughly four months I can refinance through a broker I found. I want to take a few moments to write about the mistakes I have made during this deal both in order to hopefully remember to not repeat them and maybe to help prevent someone else from making them. All in all I am happy with how things went but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Quick details on the deal. Short sale 3 BR 2 Ba, purchase price was 92k. I'm in at roughly 16k of rehab including materials and appliances. I expect ARV to come in at 135k conservatively so I'll end up having to leave around 9k of capital tied up in the property if I refinance 75% back out. It should rent for around $1350/month in a B-/C+ neighborhood that is going through above average appreciation lately. From closing to listing took 2 months and a week.

A few mistakes in no particular order:

• This is the first property that I decided to put into an LLC. At the time I made my initial offer, I did not yet have an LLC. I was told by a lawyer I consulted that I could spin one up quickly if I needed to and that it was trivial to update the contract to change the buyer name to the LLC's name. My offer was accepted by the seller and went to the bank to be approved. It took almost 7 months for the bank to approve the sale at which time I finally got around to setting up the LLC. Yes, I was able to spin it up quickly (for an additional fee) and it was trivial to attempt to update  the contract but the bank would not allow that to happen. They said they would have to start the process all over again and there was no guarantee it would be approved a second time. Rather than gamble and potentially wait another 7 months I went through with the deal and put the property in my name. I had to wait 30 days after closing to transfer the deed which cost me an additional $285. Lesson: If you're going to title a property in an LLC's name, make the offer using the LLC from the beginning
• I "underestimated" rehab costs. I put underestimate in quotes because it implies I did more than just guess. I bought the book on flipping by J Scott over a year ago and have read it multiple times. I have realized for a long time that calling contractors from multiple disciplines to get ballpark pricing is essential for estimating rehab costs and yet I never got around to it. Instead I found a GC that I intended to work with and planned to get a ballpark on potential deals from him. This short sale was priced to move and had five offers within the first day it was listed. We had to give our second, best and final offer within hours and I wasn't able to get in touch with my guy in time so I used my gut based on some past work and my agent to guesstimate. My original guesstimate was 12k. Based on what I expected the ARV to be I knew I'd have to leave a few grand of capital in the deal. Lesson: Do the homework from the book. I still haven't done it. It's a gap that I need to address. I do have a better idea of certain costs now that I went through this relatively minor rehab but the amount I don't yet know is staggering.
• I did not realize that because this was an all cash offer I would have to periodically prove to the bank that I still had the funds available to purchase the property without knowing whether or not the bank would ultimately approve my offer. Makes enough sense to me and this wasn't a problem because I had the funds but it also meant that my cash was effectively tied up for the 7 months it took to get approval. An approval that was not guaranteed. I've still got training wheels on and haven't been scaling quickly by any means but I allowed this to slow me down mentally. This wasn't necessarily a mistake but it was something I didn't anticipate. Lesson: Short sales really can take a long time and depending on how your deal is structured it can tie your capital up for the duration. Only having to maintain a 20% down payment vs 100% would have been easier but would it still have resulted in an accepted deal? I think at 92k I was likely the highest bidder but how can I be certain it wasn't the all cash offer that sealed it? Hard to say