Jerry Nortons Price Per Square Foot Estimator?

[Brendan Lawrence]

Hey guys,

I’m in Oregon. 

I’m sure there’s people here who have seen the Jerry Norton flipping and wholesale videos online. 

My question is about the numbers he throws out as rule of thumb numbers. I’m aware he invests all over and these numbers get fudged accordingly, but does anybody here have any input to their experiences with the numbers?

This is his breakdown for houses under 1500 sq:     

1) Light rehabs (carpet and paint) come in at $15,000.   
2) An average rehab being full remodel…kitchens baths etc is $30,000.    
3) Heavy rehab is full gut and exteriors at $60,000.    
.       
I’m pretty familiar with my own pricing as a contractor and I’m pretty middle class with my clients. I don’t care do the “just make it work again” jobs, but I also couldn’t tell you anything about WOLF appliances.    
. 
i can see how the light numbers could work….I could see how you could squeeze a cheap average remodel in at that cost…. But it has to be really cheap! However the full gut I can only see that price covering the exterior, I tend to come up with about $100/sf for gut jobs with new exterior.  
 
anybody else in here wanna talk prices? The good thing about being a contractor is you can do all the work. The bad thing About being a contractors is you don’t know what other contractors cost. 

[Will Barnard]

These gurus will say just about anything to sell yo there newest program, secret, or bootcamp! Humbug!

If you want to go about your real estate business using some arbitrary price per Sf for rehab calculations, be my guest, but if you are going to swim in those waters, let me first toss you a life vest - you will need it!

Let's say you have two identical homes on the same street, both 3 beds, 2 baths and 1500 sf single story, model matches. One home (Home A) needs a new roof, new electrical panel, new water heater, foundation repairs, plus the remodel upgrades of new kitchen, baths, flooring, new windows, paint, landscape. The second home needs just the remodel upgrades. If you used the arbitrary price per Sf calculation, you would be way way off on home A compared to the later.

The ONLY way to estimate rehab costs correctly and accurately is to build your SOW (scope of work) and then use your itemized spreadsheet to input each line item needed with each respective cost. Even if you go the route of employing 1-3 contractors to bid it, you still need to provide them a SOW. Knowing what each line item will cost takes time and effort too. You need to research material costs and then labor costs for each line item. Once you have those, you can plug them in to your spreadsheet, then plug in the SOW line items and bam, you have your final number. Once you do this enough, you will learn to break up the home into sections (kitchen, bath, flooring, paint, windows, doors, landscape, roof, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, etc.) and you will know your average cost per section (or per sf in the case of flooring, tile, etc.) (and per linear foot for trims). Then you simply walk through each potential purchase and add up the sections in your head and walk out with a number that will be very close. Lock it in closer using your spreadsheet.