The trick is to determine these prices such that you will optimize your upside while still covering your downside and finding the buyer and/or seller who agrees.

If numbers aren't your thing, you can still use the calculators under the Tools menu.  

Optimal on those is to get an interest only loan so the payments are real low while you inject capital into the property itself.

I would do that, it's under the Tools menu.

So welcome mistakes with optimism and when they come, learn quickly from it and get better.  

From the menu above you can get the books 'How to invest with little or no money down' and 'The book on flipping' as well as podcasts and webinairs and you'd be a fool not to start with those kinds of things.I personally would not invest far from home again and unless you're thinking of a turnkey investment with lots of referrals, I'd reconsider leaving yourself open to getting ripped off when you don't even know it.And then you might have fun too.

Hover over the "Connect" button, and click the "Follow" option in the popout menu.

Lol) If you get it from BP from the menu above rather than from Amazon, you'll also get 'The book on estimating'.

Like @Ryan Billingsley said, it is good to have an ideal figure of how you want the property to operate once leverage is applied, as this will dictate how much money you will need to leave into the project to make those numbers work.If you have held title to a property for 6 months, you can get a cash-out refinance through a Fannie/Freddie mortgage that will use 75% of the new appraised value of the property, and also provide you with 30/30 terms and a low interest rate in order to optimize cash flow.

The optimal time to buy in SoCal for this cycle was 2009-2012, so people jumping in today shouldn't expect the same stellar performance of the past few years until we are in recovery from some future recession, which could be many years from now.