And unless you have very deep pockets, you can't afford to be that much off....So as has been said....hire a very experienced General Contractor and have them give you a budget number based on your SOW, (plus they will find other things that need to be done that you will not have seen).On your succeeding projects, you do a budget yourseld first, then hire the GC and compare numbers.Then, eventually you will be comfortable going all solo...but it takes time.

Union City I tend to avoid, there are a few pockets that work for MTR but for the most part the city's rental laws make life very tough for landlords. 

Personally I would rather finance it and keep the cash in hand to go buy more properties than pay the full amount out of pocket, regardless of the potential tax benefits.

Hello Bigger Pockets community!

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets community! 

This guy is offering me to put down $48,450 which is right at 10%dp + $3,550.00 out of pocket and give me the same rate at 6.875, but with a 3-2-1, starting off at 3.875% on the first year.

As a general rule of thumb it's smart to pay for 10 - 20% of the total costs (purchase price + rehab) out of your pocket and then finance the rest with hard money. 

I read it a lot of different places including on bigger pockets.

Then moved out and we're sharing another house hack with less than $200 out of pocket monthly for utilities and internet while using 3 bedrooms and a bonus room for ourselves.

Quote from @Donald Hatter: Hello fellow Bigger Pockets investors!