Fix & Flip: Project Profit and Cash Return
Model a resale project with explicit acquisition costs, carrying costs and purchase-only financing.
What This Calculator Does
Estimate nominal profit before taxes for a purchase, renovation and resale project. The model includes cash-paid acquisition costs, a constant purchase-only loan, carrying costs and sale costs. It reports return on total project capital separately from return on your own cash, and keeps any cash shortfall at sale visible.
Who Is This For
Investors, real-estate agents and clients evaluating a specific Florida resale scenario with their own cost estimates and financing quotes. It is not a verified valuation, lender decision, tax calculation or complete cash-management plan.
How It Works
Enter all eight assumptions: purchase price, expected resale value after repairs, rehab budget, monthly carrying costs, whole holding months, sale-cost percentage, cash-paid acquisition costs and purchase loan principal. Enter explicit 0 for a cost not modeled or an all-cash loan amount. Include quoted interest in monthly carry once; exclude principal repayment. Confirm the model, compare both return bases and check signed sale cash. Verify quotes and recalculate changed assumptions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What costs are included in project profit?
Profit is expected resale value minus purchase, rehab, cash-paid acquisition costs, monthly carry times the holding period, and sale costs. Acquisition costs are nonrefundable cash payments net of usable credits, not refundable escrow, idle reserves or costs repeated elsewhere. Monthly carry can include quoted interest, property taxes, insurance, utilities and other recurring project costs. Sale costs apply once to the entered resale value. All eight inputs require explicit values; a blank cost is not silently treated as zero.
How do project ROI and own-cash ROI differ?
Project ROI divides the same nominal profit by purchase plus rehab, acquisition and total carry. Own-cash ROI uses that deployed capital minus the purchase loan. Sale costs reduce profit but are excluded from those pre-sale capital bases because the model pays them from sale proceeds. Net sale cash minus own cash equals profit. With zero own cash, its ROI is undefined, not infinite or 0%. Neither return is annualized or an IRR.
What financing does the calculator support?
Only a purchase loan from 0 to the purchase price whose principal stays constant and is repaid once at resale. Its quoted interest must already be in monthly carry. Loan repayment reduces sale cash, not profit a second time. Rehab, acquisition and carry are otherwise cash-paid. Amortization, extra draws, financed fees, construction lending and changing financing terms are not supported. Obtain the actual dated lender payoff separately; this projection is not that quote.
Can the result show a total loss or money due at sale?
Yes. ARV can be explicitly 0 for a total-loss stress assumption, not a predicted or verified value. Negative profit and negative net sale cash are preserved. Negative sale cash means the model needs additional funds to pay sale costs and the purchase loan; it is not clipped to zero. Losses can exceed the own cash invested, so own-cash ROI may be below -100%. Taxes on profit, refund claims and actual closing liquidity are not calculated.
Does the 70% rule give a safe maximum offer?
No. It is a flexible screening heuristic: 70% of the entered ARV minus rehab, with a minimum of 0 and rounded down to a cent. It does not separately deduct acquisition, carry or selling costs. It is not proof of profit, a legal offer limit, a verified appraisal or a loan approval. The full cost ledger and property-specific quotes matter even when an offer falls below this screening figure.
How are months, cents and estimates handled?
The holding period is 1–36 whole months; 2.0 means 2, not 20, and fractions are rejected. Money inputs allow cents up to US$2 billion per field; sale costs accept 0%–30% with four decimal places, an input range rather than a market rate. Sale costs are rounded once to cents, half-cent upward, and totals sum the cent amounts. The 70% offer is rounded down. Outputs over US$100 billion in absolute value are rejected as a computation limit, not a lending rule. Verify the cost, resale and payoff quotes; this model does not calculate taxes or a bank invoice.