We are local here in Pittsburgh and very familiar with the Lawrenceville market.   

To tackle this, start by gathering data on average rents for similar SFHs in your area through local listings or realtor consultations.

However, I don't wish to pay a ton of fees - just to have MLS access last year I had to to pay CAR+NAR+Local Association+ MLS fees.

For SEO benefits, make sure to call out the top local attractions on your site and all your OTA listings by name.

I have a few people around me that already to this locally but I welcome any and all help I can get. 

Are you local? 

We then set you up with a team on the ground (consisting of an agent, project manager, general contractor, and property manager) who you will leverage to verify or change our initial numbers as needed; they have hyper-local and real-time knowledge that is invaluable to reducing your required input time and reducing your risk.

Would you pay for a subscription model say $1000 a month where you got access to knowledgeable investor agent who had zero stake on if the transaction closed but provided you with local knowledge, strategies, ran comps, looked over deals, even looked over home inspection reports, talked in the phone, basically a consultant (you could possibly tack on services like writing offers or seeing a property in person) my thought is if you buy a property relatively quickly, it’s much cheaper than paying 2.5% even if you end up paying for the service for a few month’s and realize it’s not a good time for you to buy you are only out a few thousand dollars as opposed to hundreds of thousands of dollars, this would basically take the agent’s need to sell you a home out the process, presumably there motivation would be to keep you subscripted for as long as possible but you could easily just cancel and if you were interested in buying later resubscribe than.

I heard it's a good start to look at how much the cost of materials are and call local workers on how much they charge for labor.

Find out what the local jurisdiction (and HOA if you're in one) require and then talk to some contractors for estimates.