[Calc Review] Help me analyze this deal

[Eric Dami]

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*This link comes directly from our calculators, based on information input by the member who posted.

[James Masotti]

Originally posted by @Eric Dami:

Hi James - Thank you for your response. To address the fee %, I later read the 6% recommend after posting, so I will ensure that for the future. To address the rehab budget, what is your recommend way to estimate these prior to seeing a property? 

A possible solution: I could do more research on how much and timeframe each part of the house to redo (e.g. New bathroom, New kitchen, etc?)

1.  Read J Scott's Book
2. Spend lots of time in Home Depot and Lowes
3. Find a rehab calculator like the one at David Robertson has on the BP Fileplace and on his website houseflippingspreadsheet.com
4. Then use the homewyse.com website to get some estimates of what the line items in David's spreadsheet will run for your market. In particular the labor costs. Update material costs based on what you saw at Lowes and Home Depot...but check this against homewyse as well
5. Start making nice with a contractor and ask to see their existing job sites.
6. Use J Scotts method of going to Home Depot or Lowes early in the morning and see who is checking out at the contractors desk if you need a place to start
7. When starting don't try to estimate by only looking at an MLS listing
8. If you're new the odds of you finding a deal on the MLS are rare. It not impossible but understand there are dozens if not hundreds of other flippers out there who can estimate rehab and ARV just by looking at pictures and if they haven't already paid cash for the house, than it's probably not a good deal. Again...there are hidden gems, but don't expect this to be the normal.
9. Start looking at as many houses as you can. Take lots of pictures and videos when doing your walk through.
10. Do mock-up construction budgets
11. Share these budgets, pictures, videos with more experienced investors and contractors in your market (other markets wont be as useful) and ask them if the numbers you have make sense. They'll start to point things out you may have missed.
12. After doing this a few times you can get comfortable that your numbers are about 80% correct and you can just build in a 20-25% contingency for the stuff you missed 
13. Now you're ready to start pulling the trigger

Of course you can ignore all of the hard work up front and just dive in...but then you also need to be prepared to lose $20k...if you don't have $20k to lose...spend the time to do your homework and practice first.