A common rule of thumb is to budget around 1-2% of the property's value annually for maintenance.Management Fees: If you plan to hire a property manager or use a property management service, factor in their fees as part of your operating costs.Contingency Fund: Always include a contingency fund in your budget to account for unexpected expenses or fluctuations in operating costs.Financial Modeling Tools: Consider using financial modeling tools or spreadsheets designed for real estate investment analysis.

If you're buying a property that is not new construction you  may be able to call the local utility company to find out what the power bill typically runs so you at least have a ballpark figure.Good luck to you.

Quote from @Trevor Powers: Wow, sounds like a good find!

The VA home loan can be a powerful tool for purchasing a multi-family property, offering benefits like no down payment and competitive interest rates.

My personal opinion is to not put anything down and instead save for closing costs and unexpected but expected repairs.

My local power company has a program where they can lower power consumption to a property(ies) to prevent the grid going down during high power usage surges. 

More power to you if you have some "code" 100s or 1,000s of REI (a bunch of them are here in BP Nation) with software engineering degrees haven't figured out.

I flew in unexpectedly to confirm and subsequently fired him. 

The cost of this ~two-hour mentorship was the price of a nice sushi meal (which the unexpected mentor offered to split.)

BTW, we get CFLs free from our local power company in exchange for spent ones, so it was an easy fix.