good luck man, start making pro formas for existing sites and get your credit in order to get a nice pre-approval with which to negotiate a final selling price for your first deal

You really should have an accurate cash flow estimate.Accurate pro forma reflect best estimate of expenses including best estimates of maintenance/cap ex costs.  

They can buy a "How to Rehab" in a box form a guru for a couple grand.

These rules don't really take into account expenses, and I've have to see a pro-forma first, and for all I know, the property could need a new water heater, stove, dishwasher and roof within 6 months of purchase.

There are still a lot of great deals out there though it seems to me the bottom for MA was last year and investment properties have come a long way back up.

Again, others might feel differently here.3) property level due diligence: (takes seconds to weeks per deal): here is where I drill in with the low-level details.a) pro forma popping: I examine all the assumptions, and see if they are overoptimistic or not.

My simple technique is to do some pro-forma (sample) calculations to know what to target.  

Obviously, this is a pretty contrived example & lots of assumptions are being made, but when you put together your pro forma & model all cash vs. debt service, you should get a similar kind of result. 

Booker, that is correct.  4% would be great if you can find that in the LLC.  5.75-6.5% is what I would budget/ pro forma at.

I recommend if you're doing a long distance deal make sure you can form a team on the ground and really forge long term relationships with your team members.