Offer Math·August 26, 2026
Holding Costs: What Every Extra Month on Market Really Costs
Taxes, insurance, utilities, interest and the HOA nobody budgeted. Priced per month, then multiplied by the timeline you will actually hit.
One article a week on the arithmetic behind a deal — what you can pay, what the finished house is worth, what the rehab really costs, and what the lender checks first. No fabricated statistics, no income claims, and every worked example shows its math.
Taxes, insurance, utilities, interest and the HOA nobody budgeted. Priced per month, then multiplied by the timeline you will actually hit.
Three to six renovated closed sales, adjusted toward your subject, cross-checked against median $/sqft. When the methods cluster you have an ARV. When they scatter, the scatter is the finding.
A rule of thumb that works on a $200K house in a normal market and quietly fails on cheap houses, expensive houses, heavy rehabs and slow exits.
The full subtraction, line by line: ARV minus rehab, holding, buying, selling, financing and your required profit — and why the "spread" is usually smaller than it looks.
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