Ideally, I'd like to get bids before I place an offer in order to have a good handle on the rehab costs and place my offer accordingly, but on the other side of the coin, I could potentially place offers on many different properties before having one accepted, all the while I'm getting bids from contractors for which the job for them doesn't materialize.Or, do I visit the properties myself and with my agent, make an very rough estimate of rehab costs, make an offer based on the estimate, and then bring contractors in for bids *after* getting the property under contract, then potentially renegotiate the offer price if the bids come in higher than estimated?

I would research on Bigger Pockets as there are some people who have shared contracts or at least can steer you in the right direction.

I know you may not be able to put them here directly, if not, send me a message.

As you may know, if you get it directly from each county each one provides it in different formats, which can be very hard to go through and make uniform.

I'd recommend going directly to navyfederal.org or penfed.org.Hope that helps, let me know if you have further questions on these tools to access equity.

My ideal plan is to obtain hard money loan to purchase and rehab both the properties, flip one of them to repay the lender and keep one to hold as I plan on house hacking and leasing to other tenants.

I do not have direct access to the mls yet and have been relying primarily on sites such Zillow, trulia, BeenVerified, etc. any advice on telling the difference between a good comp and bad comp without using the mls?

Here is the backstoryMy wife happened to drive by and found the home directly after the sellers agent put the for sale sign in the front yard.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

There are well reasoned articles by attorneys around the United States which explain that the ideal scenario would be to have a local attorney walk through your particular business plan to determine your best course of action and to draft what you need.