Repairs are smaller ticket items needed to keep things in working order that you expense on your taxes the entire amount on the year which the expense was incurred (Eg: leaky faucet).

We live fairly meagerly and splurge more on convenience rather than big ticket items (no fancy car, big house, etc.  

@Patrick Boutin, if you become pre-approved for $400k (per your example), @Chris Mason was implying that you should aim for your PURCHASE price to be about half of that (so as to give you LOTS of "wiggle room" for the rehab costs that you're asking about).A healthy rehab budget can be your best ticket to (cleverly) add a LOT more value to a distressed property than the rehab actually costs.

That will probably determine if there any unknown big ticket items.

That generated 660k in gross commissions for myself and since I owned the brokerage I just paid my assistants.. was a very good year..LOLI could have sold nothing and lost 50k I paid up front for the room the food the advertising the radio adds.. the free tickets to the Rolling Stones  etc etc. 

It makes sense to be cautious when committing to a big ticket, illiquid investment in any market environment.

Liz, For your first investment, this house seems like a big ticket item.  

But over the next 6 weeks, I'd like to get down to "runway level" as much as possible from afar.I priced tickets today, so I'd like to set a date for the trip and really have my @#$* together when I get there.

@Mike Lowery  http://www.eventbrite.com/e/rentals-flips-cocktails-dips-raising-money-for-breast-cancer-research-tickets-13227075539

(The roof is the biggest ticket item on the list).