Fix and Flip Calculator (House Flipping ROI)
Fix and flip calculator. 70% rule check, total acquisition + holding + selling costs, profit, ROI, annualized return, breakeven sale price. Complete house-flipper deal analysis.
Fix and Flip Calculator
Flip P&L breakdown
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Purchase price | — |
| Rehab | — |
| Holding costs (total) | — |
| Hard money interest | — |
| Hard money points | — |
| Total acquisition cost | — |
| − Agent commission | — |
| − Buyer concessions | — |
| − Selling closing costs | — |
| Net sale proceeds | — |
| = PROFIT | — |
Key metrics
| Cash invested (your equity) | — |
| Breakeven sale price | — |
| Profit margin vs ARV | — |
How to use the fix and flip calculator
Enter acquisition + rehab
Purchase price + your closing costs as a buyer (title, escrow, transfer taxes, lender fees) + the rehab budget. The calculator carries no contingency line of its own, so get several contractor bids and add your own allowance for surprises (water damage, code upgrades, supply delays) to the rehab figure before you enter it.
Enter hold + financing
Hold period runs from closing on the purchase to closing on the sale — rehab, listing and the buyer's escrow all count. Hard-money lenders quote an annual interest rate plus points (an upfront fee as a percentage of the loan); both vary by lender and market, so enter your quote — the 11% and 3 points shown are placeholders, not a survey. Assumption to know about: the calculator treats the hard-money loan as 85% of purchase + rehab, so your cash is the remaining 15% plus closing, holding and financing costs. Holding cost per month is tax + insurance + utilities + HOA only; loan interest is worked out separately from the rate and points.
Enter ARV (sale price) + selling costs
ARV = After-Repair Value: the realistic sale price once the rehab is finished, taken from recent closed sales of comparable renovated homes nearby — never from active asking prices. Shade the estimate down rather than up; every downstream number scales with it. Agent commission is a negotiated percentage of the sale price: since the NAR settlement practice changes of 17 August 2024, buyer-agent compensation is no longer offered through the MLS and must be agreed in writing, so enter what your listing agreement actually says. Buyer concessions are the closing-cost help you agree to give the buyer, also a percentage of ARV.
Check the 70% rule
70% rule: maximum purchase price = (ARV × 0.70) − rehab. This is a screening heuristic popularised in US flipping guides (J Scott, The Book on Flipping Houses, BiggerPockets Publishing, 2019, presents a version of it as a maximum-offer formula) — not a valuation and not a published standard. The 30% it holds back has to pay the agent, the buyer's concessions, closing, holding and financing costs, and still leave a profit; the P&L table below shows exactly how those line items consume it at your inputs. Failing the rule is a prompt to re-check the ARV and rehab figures, not an automatic no.
Read profit + ROI verdict
Net profit = net sale proceeds − total acquisition cost. ROI = profit ÷ cash invested (your 15% of purchase and rehab, plus closing, holding, interest and points). Annualized ROI is simple annualisation — ROI × 12 ÷ months held, not compounded — so a 4-month flip at 12% ROI shows 36% annualized. The verdict flags a profit under $25,000 as thin and an ROI above 20% as strong; those are this calculator's own screening thresholds, not published benchmarks. Everything shown is pre-tax.
Fix and flip — buying ugly homes, selling pretty ones for profit
Fix and flip — also called "rehabbing" or simply "flipping" — is the strategy of buying a property that needs work, renovating it, and reselling it within months rather than years. ATTOM's 2025 Year-End U.S. Home Flipping Report (published March 2026) counted 297,045 single-family homes and condos flipped in the United States in 2025 — 7.4% of all home sales — with a typical gross profit of $65,981 and a typical gross return of 25.5%, down from $77,000 and 32.1% in 2024 and the lowest margin ATTOM has recorded since 2008. Read those figures carefully: ATTOM's "gross profit" is resale price minus purchase price, before rehab, holding, financing and selling costs — which is precisely the gap this calculator fills. The difference between a profit and a loss on a single deal usually comes down to two inputs: the ARV estimate and the rehab budget.
The 70% rule + why it matters
The 70% rule is a maximum-offer heuristic: purchase price should not exceed (ARV × 0.70) − rehab. Example: $320,000 ARV and $50,000 rehab → maximum purchase $174,000. It appears throughout US flipping guides — J Scott's The Book on Flipping Houses (BiggerPockets Publishing, 2019) builds its maximum-purchase-price formula on the same idea — but no regulator, appraisal body or academic text defines it, and the 70% is a convention, not a measured constant. What the 30% has to cover is concrete, and the P&L table above shows it at your inputs: at this page's defaults the agent's commission takes 6% of ARV, buyer concessions 2%, selling closing costs about 1%, purchase closing costs 1.25%, six months of holding costs 3.4%, and hard-money interest and points another 5.1% — leaving about 11% of ARV, some $35,300, as pre-tax profit. Change any one of those and the margin moves; that is why the rule is a screen rather than an answer. Exceeding it does not mean the deal fails — it means the safety margin is gone and the ARV and rehab estimates now have to be right.
A flip has three numbers that can sink it — the purchase price, the rehab budget and the ARV — and this calculator can only be as honest as those three inputs. Everything else on the page is arithmetic.
Cost categories that flippers underestimate
Five costs that a back-of-envelope "ARV minus purchase minus rehab" leaves out, sized at this page's default inputs so you can see their scale. (1) Holding costs: property tax, insurance, utilities and HOA for the entire hold — 6 months × $1,800 = $10,800. (2) Financing: at 11% and 3 points on a hard-money loan of 85% of purchase + rehab ($191,250), six months costs about $10,500 in interest and $5,700 in points; your lender's quote replaces both. (3) Selling costs: a 6% commission ($19,200), 2% buyer concessions ($6,400) and $3,000 of closing costs come to $28,600 — roughly 9% of a $320,000 ARV. (4) Tax: a flip held one year or less is a short-term capital gain, taxed at ordinary federal income-tax rates (IRC §1222(1); 10%–37% in 2026) plus state tax — and a taxpayer the IRS treats as a dealer owes ordinary income and self-employment tax on every flip whatever the holding period (IRC §1221(a)(1)). The ROI on this page is pre-tax. (5) Opportunity cost: your time and the capital tied up for the hold. None of the five is exotic; all five are routinely left off the napkin.
Flipping from Singapore and Southeast Asia
The calculator's inputs are US-shaped — hard money, agent commission as a percentage of ARV, buyer concessions — because short-hold flipping is overwhelmingly a US practice. In Singapore the tax code is designed to make it uneconomic: Seller's Stamp Duty of 16%, 12%, 8% and 4% applies to residential property sold within the first, second, third and fourth year of purchase respectively for purchases from 4 July 2025 (previously 12%/8%/4% over three years), charged on the higher of price and market value (IRAS). A sub-one-year resale therefore surrenders 16% of the sale price before any other cost, and IRAS may also treat gains from a pattern of buying and selling as taxable trading income rather than a tax-free capital gain, weighing frequency, motive, financing and holding period. The maths still works as a screen for a Malaysian auction property or a Hong Kong small-unit refit — replace the hard-money inputs with your actual financing and the commission with the local agent's fee — but check the stamp-duty and gains-tax treatment of the market you are in before trusting the profit line.
The 70% rule, the hard-money carry and the short-term gains tax on a flip
70% rule: maximum purchase = ARV × 0.70 − rehab. A screening heuristic from US flipping guides (J Scott, 2019), not a valuation standard — fail it and re-check your ARV and rehab before anything else.
ATTOM's 2025 year-end report: 297,045 US flips, typical gross profit $65,981, typical gross ROI 25.5% — the thinnest margin since 2008, and measured before rehab, holding and selling costs.
Hard money is priced as an annual rate plus points — an upfront fee as a percentage of the loan. Both vary by lender; here they are inputs, and the loan is assumed to cover 85% of purchase + rehab.
Selling costs at this page's defaults: 6% commission + 2% concessions + $3,000 closing = $28,600 on a $320,000 ARV, about 9%. Commission has been individually negotiated since the NAR settlement changes of August 2024.
Held one year or less = short-term capital gain (IRC §1222), taxed at ordinary federal rates of 10%–37% in 2026 plus state tax. The ROI shown here is pre-tax.
The calculator has no contingency line. Whatever allowance you want for rehab overruns has to be added to the rehab figure before you enter it.
Hold time matters: 4-month flip at 12% ROI = 36% annualized; 12-month flip at 30% ROI = 30% annualized.
Flip vs BRRRR: flip = realize all profit + tax hit. BRRRR = keep property + tax-deferred wealth growth.
Most-overlooked cost: your time. 6 months × 10 hrs/week × $50/hr opportunity cost = $13K real cost.
Top flippers: build relationships with wholesalers, contractors, real estate agents. The deal flow advantage compounds.
Frequently asked questions
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Five sources, in order of decreasing market discount. (1) Wholesalers: investors who put properties under contract then assign to flippers — they find off-market deals you can't easily access. (2) Auctions: foreclosure + tax-sale auctions. Need cash + same-day funding ability. (3) Driving for dollars: physically driving neighborhoods looking for distressed properties + direct-marketing owners. (4) MLS expired listings: properties that didn't sell — motivated sellers may accept discounts. (5) MLS active listings: rare to find deeply-discounted properties on MLS; most are picked off quickly.
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US federal treatment, in outline. A property held for one year or less produces a short-term capital gain (IRC §1222(1)), taxed at ordinary income rates — seven brackets from 10% to 37% in 2026 (IRS) — plus any state tax. Held more than one year, the gain is long-term and taxed at 0%, 15% or 20% depending on taxable income, with a possible 3.8% net investment income tax on top (IRS Topic 409). Separately, the IRS can treat someone who flips regularly as a dealer: property "held primarily for sale to customers in the ordinary course of a trade or business" is not a capital asset at all (IRC §1221(a)(1)), so the profit is ordinary business income subject to self-employment tax regardless of holding period, and a like-kind exchange is unavailable because §1031(a)(2) excludes property held primarily for sale. Whether you are a dealer is a facts-and-circumstances question — frequency, intent, how the property was marketed — so take the question to a CPA before your second flip, not your tenth.
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Different goals. Flip: realise profit immediately, pay tax, redeploy fully into next deal. Good for cash-generation, building startup capital, or in markets where rents don't cash flow. BRRRR: keep the property + recover most capital. Better for long-term wealth building, tax-deferred appreciation, passive income. Many investors do BOTH: BRRRR in stable markets where rents cash flow; flip in expensive markets where rentals don't pencil. The 70%-rule discipline applies to both.
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Three approaches, from most to least reliable. (1) Contractor walkthrough: have a licensed contractor walk the property and price it line by line; slow, but it is the only method that sees the actual building. (2) Scope-of-work estimate: write the room-by-room scope yourself (kitchen, bathrooms, roof, HVAC, electrical, flooring, paint) and price each line from recent local bids — J Scott's The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs (BiggerPockets Publishing, 2019) is the standard reference for building that list. (3) Per-square-foot rule of thumb: useful only to decide whether a property is worth a walkthrough; the ranges vary so much by region, labour market and finish level that no single figure belongs on this page. Whichever method, get several bids, favour the median rather than the lowest, and add your contingency to the rehab figure before entering it — the calculator will not add one for you.
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Yes. Set the hard-money rate and points to zero and the interest and points lines disappear from the P&L — at this page's defaults that is about $16,200 of cost on a six-month hold. What the calculator cannot show is that its cash-invested figure still assumes you put in only 15% of purchase + rehab; an all-cash flipper puts in 100%, so the true cash-on-cash ROI is far lower than the number displayed even though the dollar profit is higher. Between the two extremes sit a home-equity line on another property, a private lender, or seller financing — enter whichever rate and fee you are actually quoted. Cash also buys speed at closing, which is often the real edge in a competitive purchase.
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The ARV, then the rehab budget, then the hold period — in that order, because each one drives the others. An ARV taken from asking prices rather than closed sales overstates every downstream number at once; a rehab budget without a contingency line turns every surprise into lost profit; and a hold that slips from six months to nine adds three more months of holding cost and interest while the annualized figure quietly falls. Use the calculator to test the deal against the pessimistic version of each: enter the ARV 5–10% lower, the rehab higher by your contingency, and the hold longer, and see whether the profit line survives. If it only works at the optimistic settings, the deal is the settings, not the property.
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Match the neighborhood. Going significantly above local standard rarely pays back: a $400K neighborhood will not pay $500K for your "extra-fancy" finishes. Use mid-grade finishes that match the area's aspirational tier. Standard flipper finishes: granite or quartz counters, stainless appliances (white in budget markets), LVP flooring, recessed lighting, neutral paint, new fixtures, neutral cabinets. Skip high-end: solid hardwood, marble, custom millwork, top-line appliances unless the area genuinely demands them.
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Contested. Critics argue that flippers bid against first-time buyers for the cheapest stock and resell it at a mark-up; the counter-argument is that flippers take on properties most retail buyers will not — vacant, distressed, with deferred maintenance — and return them to habitable inventory. For scale, ATTOM's 2025 year-end report puts flips at 7.4% of all US home sales (7.6% in 2024): material, but not the bulk of the market. Whatever the answer, this calculator only tells you whether a specific flip pencils; the policy question is one to weigh separately.
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No. All flip-deal inputs stay in your browser. Computations run entirely client-side. Open DevTools → Network when you click Analyse and you'll see zero outbound requests.
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Two kinds of source are worth your time. For the method: J Scott, The Book on Flipping Houses and The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs (both BiggerPockets Publishing, revised editions 2019) set out the maximum-purchase-price formula and the rehab scope this calculator assumes you have done. For the market: ATTOM's quarterly and year-end U.S. Home Flipping Reports are the standard published count of flips, gross profit and gross ROI — and remember that their gross profit is resale minus purchase price only. For tax: IRS Topic 409 (capital gains holding periods and rates) and Publication 544 (sales of business property, including dealer treatment). Lender quotes belong in the inputs, not in a reading list.
Method & sources
How it computes
Profit = net sale proceeds (ARV less agent commission, buyer concessions and selling closing costs) minus total cost (purchase, purchase closing, rehab, monthly holding costs × months, and hard-money interest and points on a loan assumed to cover 85% of purchase + rehab). ROI = profit ÷ cash invested (the 15% not financed plus closing, holding, interest and points); annualized ROI = ROI × 12 ÷ months held. The 70% check compares the purchase price with ARV × 0.70 − rehab.
What this tool implements
- 70%-of-ARV maximum offer (ARV × 0.70 − rehab) is applied as a screening heuristic from US flipping guides, not as a valuation or a published standard
- Hard-money financing is assumed at 85% loan-to-cost; the rate and points are user inputs with placeholder defaults, not surveyed market figures
- Annualized ROI is simple annualisation (ROI × 12 ÷ months), and every figure shown is pre-tax
- US tax framing: a flip held one year or less is a short-term capital gain at ordinary rates (IRC §1222(1)); dealer property is excluded from capital-asset treatment (IRC §1221(a)(1)) and from §1031 exchange (§1031(a)(2))
Sources
- Scott J. The Book on Flipping Houses: How to Buy, Rehab, and Resell Residential Properties. Rev. ed. Denver: BiggerPockets Publishing; 2019. ISBN 978-1-947200-10-4.
- ATTOM. 2025 Year-End U.S. Home Flipping Report (19 March 2026). https://www.attomdata.com/news/market-trends/flipping/2025-year-e…
- 26 U.S.C. §1222 (short-term = held not more than 1 year), §1221(a)(1) (dealer property), §1031(a)(2). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/1222 ; IRS Topic No. 409, Capital Gains and Losses. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc409
- Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore. Seller's Stamp Duty (SSD) for Residential Property — 4-year holding period and 16/12/8/4% rates for purchases on or after 4 July 2025. https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/stamp-duty/for-property/selling-or-…)-for-residential-property
What can make this go out of date
- ATTOM U.S. Home Flipping Report — quarterly and year-end (the year-end report each March); the 2025 figures quoted on the page will be superseded by the 2026 report in March 2027
- US federal income-tax brackets (IRS annual inflation adjustments, each October/November) and IRAS Seller's Stamp Duty schedule (changed 4 July 2025)
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