There can be large variations in your rehab costs dependent on those numbers and observations. 

After much trial and error, I found my niche in rural land investment.

You have to know where the file is at with the bank.Is it in the foreclosure department,short sale department,customer service,collections,or loss mitigation.If the loan is owned by a small bank they tend to do workouts differently than the large ones.Options will depend on if it is Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac backed or it's a conventional loan.The process of lease optioning back to him is not allowed anymore and these are strategies investors use to use along with assignments and other things.The banks after short sales have grown in the last few years have systematized everything instead of flying by the seat of their pants on each file which is how we did them 3 to 5 years ago.It used to be a person in the loss mit department that would handle all the short sale files as the others didn't really know how to do them.As files grew the banks started up whole departments and hired file originators who were laid off from the loan origination side and moved to the loan default side.The banks have riders on all these types of strategies now where you would be committing fraud if you employed them.Once they enact a rule with addendums you have to find a new way to do deals and change strategies.If this person has recovered then their best best is to go after a loan modification especially if they want to hold onto the property.I am seeing permanent loan mods where the lender will put back payments into the loan.ExampleLoan is 140,000With back payments,penalties,interest,attorneys fees etc. now 150,000 is owed.Interest rate was 5% but now has adjusted to 8%They will adjust rate down to 2% for first 3 years,then 3% for 3 years, and so on and when they hit 5% keep that rate for the remainder of the new structures loan.The borrower might have to bring a few K to pay reinstatement fees and as not all back escrows and payments can be put into the new loan amount.The lender would rather do this than foreclose and take a big loss.The 3 month trial plans are easy to qualify for but the permanent restructures I mentioned are harder to get approved.If they deny the borrower for the first loan mod then they can ask for another.Many servicers can offer 2 to 3 different types of loan mod plans depending on the situation.Why would a servicer do this??

I have gotten his free stuff before.They KEY is when you give them a credit card for the FREE trial they will make it hard to cancel after the trail period.What I did was go buy a pre-loaded credit card at Wal-Mart for 10 or 20 bucks can't remember which.Then use that card for the free trial to cover the shipping and handling.Then cancel on them and if they give you flack or are non-responsive they can't squeeze another dime out of that card.The program itself is okay but how you have to set up deals is tough.I believe he makes money off of all the courses and gets a ton of deals submitted by his investors who bough the courses.Then he picks the few good deals and partners on them to make money.They will also hound and call you to try to buy expensive boot camps and go to seminars etc.You ask for their funding sources so you can partner on deals and they say they won't give that up unless you spend thousands and thousands of dollars with them.So they are legitimate but not a silver bullet.You can get an idea with most of their system with the free trial.

Everything else, no matter what the words, is some variation on one of these themes.

This is NOT an exact science and some of the variations and "rankings" for lack of a better term are subjective.

How badly will wide variation in collections affect your overall picture?

Do they offer trial periods?

A little variation of house hacking @Brandon Turner ;) Has anyone done this and what are some estimation for cost, tips, and/or thoughts?

Free 7 day trial.