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.
Work backward from your end buyer’s max offer, subtract your fee, contract at or below that. Price it any other way and your list does the math for you, less politely.
The same build, three interest estimates, two of them wrong — and the bonus the drawn-balance curve gives you free: what a delay actually costs by month.
NOI over annual debt service — and the four honest expenses that turn a marketing 1.30 into an underwriting 1.05 before the lender ever sees it.
Permits, dumpsters, utilities during the hold, final clean. The lines that never make the walkthrough list and always make the invoice.
A renovated comp and a tired one are not the same house. How to adjust toward your subject and document why, so the number survives a second reader.
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.
New article every Wednesday morning. Subscribe via RSS.