Estimating Renovation Costs During Deal Analysis

[Chris Mooney]

Hi all,

I've been spending a lot of time analyzing deals in Excel, just pulling random listings off of Zillow or Realtor.com. The trickiest thing for me is to estimate renovation costs going into a property. I have been able to figure out where to get data for other major expenses and costs, but renovation costs, I feel like I'm just guessing.

I found  Scott's calculators online, but they're quite in depth, and seem like they'd be useful in a second level analysis. So its not very time efficient it seems.

Does anyone have any advice on how they look at a listing and come up with an estimate just for the sake of quick analysis? This part has me stumped.

Thanks in advance!

Chris