For us (in Las Vegas), it is common to have $200 to $300 in unplanned expenses on a ~$20,000 job.It will take longer than expected.CRITICAL - Unless you have a local person with construction experience to walk the property at least every other day, the job will take longer, cost more, and have poorer quality.If you have questions, please post them, and I will try to answer them.

Do other property managers have recommendations on provisions that can be included within a management agreement to ensure disaster / major unplanned occurrence that consume time and resources are billable?

An unplanned capital call doesn't always mean the deal is completely dead. 

Even if you plan to self-manage, you may want to calculate potential deals with the expense of having a PM as there may be a time when you choose to no longer self-manage.Recommend you also be sure to have cash reserves set aside for unplanned maint/capex expenses.

- What unplanned things/issues did you run into during the renovation?

In general, insurance provides coverage for many, sudden, unforeseen and unplanned events.

Now that he is almost complete with the project, he is presenting me with another unplanned expense.How do you deal with contractors that introduce new fees during the project?

It took us awhile to settle on our two homes we bought and built and our success with those homes just in terms of equity growth was unplanned, and yet an educated, calculated risk.

• There will always be unplanned expenses so in addition to the down payment and initial rehab you need a cash reserve.

A lot of it comes down to the math and the numbers, if you have arrived at  certain guidelines of deals you will accept, then search until you find deals that fall within those parameters (make sure that you won't have a lot of unplanned additional rehab or fixes after you purchase, that was my big mistake on one of my first ones), and then if the deal hits those numbers, pull the trigger!