Please do realistic rehab budgets and ARVs, maybe meet some local flippers to get there methods/ formulas for rehab budgets.  

I would love a formula I could just plug and chugg the numbers, so I can offer him better properties in the future.

HUD and REO banks don't care why you offer what you do, they are only looking at their numbers and have a certain formula they need to follow, usually starting with the appraisal or BPO they had done on the property.

I actually have started an excel balance spreadsheet recently to track all my transactions, expenses, assets, as well as a formula for a Debt Snowball in order to get those credit cards paid off.

In my 'perfect world' mind, I would be able to open that workbook and begin evaluating any given market because; a) First and foremost, it would be very user friendly b) It would be heavily automated through the use of formulas and/or macros that would provide easy to follow and understand prompts and solutions.c) Would be designed such that it would accept user entered data that, either as you went long or by the time you reached the end, you would receive flags of some sort that would provide a status of that market as a potential investment market (such as 'You're golden here!'

Let's have a look at two examples - one in which we factor in Principal and Interest and one where we follow Dogma.Setup (Yearly Values):Income:             $12,500Principal:           $2,050Interest:             $3,800Property Tax:    $1,500Insurance:         $800Mgmt Fee:         $1,250Vac & Cred:       $2,000Cap Ex:              $500Scenario 1: NOI = (Income + Principal) - (Interest - Property Tax - Insurance - Mgmt Fee - Vac & Cred)NOI = ($14,550) - ($9,350) = $5,200Scenario 2: NOI = (Income) - (Property Tax - Insurance - Mgmt Fee - Vac & Cred)NOI = ($12,500) - ($5,550) = $6,950In both cases, Capital Expenditures is NOT included in the formula (and for good reason).

I read an article on bp where someone was suggesting there is at least a 3k reserve per year needed for any house, no matter its price (ensued a big debate as to whether this was 2k or 4k).I'd be interested in what experienced investors in these kind of properties do set aside as reserves and what kind of formula they use (per bath/sqf?).

ARV of $200,000. repairs needed $25,000. I would get a hard money loan at 12% interest. after realtor fees and holding/closing costs considered, what should my max offer be?

my math is this:

6% realtor
3% closing ...

Instead of waiting patiently for a real deal to come along or altering their current or past approach so that they can ideally better locate a real deal, they start putting on their rose tinted glasses with ARVs, neighborhoods, and repair costs and compromising their math or analysis formulas because, darn it, doing any deal has to be better than not doing a deal at all, RIGHT??

There are too many good calculators and formulas out there to be doing the deal on anything except the solid numbers .