I re-grouted the entire second floor (kitchen/living/dining area) which ended up being very time consuming and labor-intensive.

Materials and labor are up but so are $/SF.. 

You need money for not only for the downpayment but also for closing costs (we had the seller cover most but we still had a tiny bit left), rehab (if you don't do a 203k loan) materials and labor, plus your living expenses (we barely cooked at the beginning since we spent every waking moment with workers and working in the house ourselves so we bought food everyday, we also didn't have a kitchen since we completely gutted the one that was here, and your responsibilities won't stop so you still have to pay credit cards, insurance, internet, etc)-We became BP pro members to use the calculators to analyze deals and we used the heck out of them.

Many things can go wrong during construction, materials and labor could increase, problems with the city, problems with the scope of work, etc You could get your funding and not complete it leaving the lender with an asset not yet complete and thus, not the full equity safety cushion.Regardless if it is a bank, hard money lender, or private money, the money investor will want you to have skin in the game and have a safety cushion between work completed and work not completed.

Kitchen cabinets destroyed etc, etc.....After all remediation completed and labor costs the total came to $20500....So far insurance is covering but have not received complete estimate yet. 

I have asked around to a couple of friends and people in the industry and while I know I can go on MLS this would be a very laborous process as I am limited to searching 3 zip codes at a time and the data is not convertible to csv, wich means even more manual input. 

When we get aggressively back into the game, it'll be for larger projects with less manual labor required and my home lifestyle will be very minimalist and peaceful. 

If you do this deal, make sure to have an inspection done and itemize the repair costs and budget, breaking down the materials and labor separately for your protection.

Going with cheaper labor and materials to try and save the budget tends to cause more issues.

Before moving to California, I was in St Petersburg Florida working as sort of a day laborer for a guy that flipped houses.