From there if they meet your minimums I would go about verifying their employment and further evaluate their proof of income.

This is probably the most accurate since the appraiser is spending a lot more time evaluating the property than the assessor’s “drive-by” valuation.

I've been hesitant to even start evaluating deals because I don't want to be way off on the repair costs.

@Matt Morgan no plans for refinance at the moment, but will re-evaluate in a couple years.

You asked about evaluating the property to know how it’ll do.

I have Money saved, but I would like to avoid using it if I can, so I have looked into Hard money lenders as the quickest option, I would like help evaluating if it makes sense to use that route of financing. 

Then,  evaluate the risk and define an "affordable" ROI.

So that's another indicator to review and evaluate.

On the side of building a portfolio of investment properties in the future, I'm evaluating getting a job in Real Estate too because I'm passionate about the industry and because it can be a path to learning as much as possible about Real Estate generally while earning money, save, and then invest myself.I think it's Ok to ask for advice here, so here it goes.

what evaluation programs are you guys using to determine the best mix of price and utilization?