If you have a huge cushion between your total cost, including rehab, and the ARV, then there is room to absorb the unexpected.Out of state rehab is the riskiest strategy that we discuss on the forums.I'd recommend figuring out the rent before buying the house (based on a search of the specific area). 

The tricky part is that you need some sort of safety cushion.

Here are the key stats:$550k Zestimate (appraised at $600k last Aug for Heloc)$232k remaining mortgage4.625% interest rate30 year mortgage, maturing in 2041 (21 years left)$1,815 monthly payment: $565 principal, $900 interest, $350 escrow$2,600 monthly rent collected$600 HOA$229k Heloc on the property at 4.75% (unutilized and applied for as cushion or if want to buy another property)Aimloan, who the primary mortgage is through also, currently lists:3.5% (3.617% APR) on a 15yr fixed rate refi of $232k for a $1,658 monthly payment3.875% (3.955% APR) on a 20 yr fix rate refi for $1,390 monthly paymentboth with ~$1k closing costs.The current plan is to keep the condo as an investment property.I'm currently paying $1,465 in principal + interest, so the 20 year seems like a good idea since I'm lowering monthly payments and shortening the payoff period by 1 year.

Hello all,I'm looking for interesting ways to pay yourself while building a significant cushion of cash reserves for each property.

All of that said, you can plan and move forward by adding more cushion to your numbers so you can plan for more conservative costs and exit price.

I'd prefer to keep it as a cushion as it is my only savings.

Institutional lenders ask for down payments to give themselves a cushion against the risk of losing the investment.

I'm basically looking for something up to $50,000 (to allow somewhat of a cushion) to fix up properties for buy-and-hold.

If you don't have a huge cushion of comfort - you could find yourself in a place you really don't want to be once the problems come up.

@Mateen Qureshi Scott wasn't quite able to pull all of his cash out of this BRRRR without sacrificing his cashflow cushion, so he had to decide higher leverage / lower cashflow or higher equity / higher cashflow.