If you are handy and like doing hands on repairs, try to buy in an area that you will be in, or driving thru from time to time, at least that way you can keep some costs down by doing some of the work yourself, or at least you can keep your own eyes on how the properties are being kept up.  

Many of you may be going into your first rehab projects with eyes wide open and are thus well aware of these additional costs.

It seems that the prices are pretty high right now since I am not the only person trying to do this.I was thinking that perhaps I should keep an eye out but just start saving up capacity and collect information on this and wait for the next recession to do this.

The idea of taking the neighborhood's eye-sore and flipping it into a grand profitable property instantly hooked me.

At the same time I would like to keep my eyes open for a commercial retail building but I am having hard time finding listings without paying monthly charge for loopnet.

To the untrained eye it literally looked like a million bucks.  

Keep ur eyes and ears alert, learn as much as you can, read expired listings every day, talk to the sellers of expired listings, farm an area, offer classes for investors.

Get multiple eyes on it.

Not only does it give me a set of eyes not "blinded by the deal", it also gives me professional ammunition to negotiate more money off the deal if/when the inspection comes back with items.

Hi Anthony,It will look weird if you try to restyle it yourself.It might be wise to talk to an Architect in the area who does SFH work.That way it's more likely that everything will be styled good to the eye and match.You don't want the 1st and second stories looking like flip flops with a tuxedo, or vice versa.Maybe look into Hardy board, and Blue and white really POPs a lot better than beige (but you have to respect the neighborhood styles and colors too).This house is not the same style, but it is an eye popping blue and white.