If your market has a significant number of FHA or VA loans with zero to low down payments where a buyer can't afford to pay their agent out of pocket, your sellers may end up cutting off a significant portion of the home buying market, or once they do come around to considering negotiating on BAC, they may feel deceived, and now you may lose the potential for the recurring client that will ultimately otherwise drive your seller lead acquisition cost down.For planning: In a great business, a good rule of thumb is to estimate:100% Gross Income35% Cost of Sale30% Expenses35% Profit <-- very few businesses achieve this, but we're looking at an ideal solutionAssuming a national price average of $300k and 0.6% GCI, you'd be looking at:$1,800 Gross Income$630 Cost of Sale <-- agents/ transaction coordinators$540 Expenses <-- photos/ signs/ lockboxes/ Errors & Omissions insurance/ MLS fees/ liability insurance/ tech fees/ VA admin support/ marketing to get clients for the business (this piece should be roughly 10% of revenue, which would be $54 in this case)$630k ProfitIf your business sold 1,000 of these homes a year, you would have:$1,800,000 Gross Income$630k Cost of Sale <-- agents/ transaction coordinators (you could have 5 agents handling 200 sales each at $100k incomes and TC support at scale)$540k Expenses <-- photos/ signs/ lockboxes/ Errors & Omissions insurance/ MLS fees/ liability insurance/ tech fees/ VA admin support/ marketing to get clients for the business (you're going to est $125k in runner fees alone for signs; $25k+ in signs, $54k in ads to attract clients, $200k in photos, $10-20k minimum in E&O, $2k in liability, and what tech/ VA support)$630k Profit Scale costs will include hiring a managing broker for compliance to help oversee all of these transactions and implement legal changes and training.

Should there be a recession I'm estimating that I'll drop from 75-80% occupancy down to around 40-50%.

(any feedback on that estimate is appreciated BTW).

Pittsburgh's current population is 302,000 (US census estimates 2024) whereas in 1950 it was 676,000. 

This means, you will either over purchase the system (too many panels, batteries, etc) or under estimate, both making the outcome not optimal. 

The engineer can help with this estimate, but local contractors are the top source for getting this info. 

If that's the case and you aren't viewing more properties in person than you are making spreadsheets on, you are destined for analysis paralysis.Spreadsheets can only tell you estimations based on numbers given to you online or by a real estate agent whose job is to sell the property.

A major challenge for me (and, I understand, for many new investors) is estimating the price of renos needed, which of course makes it difficult to know what's a reasonable price to offer!

Are you getting estimates in DD to decide?

We will evaluate their portfolio, estimating the purchase price and current value of every deal they've done from the beginning of time.