Rehab Cost Estimator — Free Repair Budget by Trade

A single 'repairs' box is how investors lie to themselves. This estimator makes you price fourteen trades, then pads the total so the first surprise does not sink the offer.

Walk a house with a notepad and you will still miss a panel, a slab leak, or a roof that only fails after the first storm of your hold. The point of a trade-level budget is not precision to the dollar. It is refusing to hide an entire system inside the word 'misc.' Roof, foundation, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, kitchen, baths, floors, openings, paint both sides, landscape, garage, and a honest miscellaneous line. If a trade is zero, that is a decision, not a default.

Square footage is here so you can sanity-check the total. A twenty thousand dollar rehab on a 900 square foot bungalow is a different animal than the same number on a 2,400 square foot two-story. Dollars per square foot will not tell you if the kitchen is a full gut, but it will tell you when your budget is living in fantasy relative to the building.

Contingency is not optional padding for nervous people. Ten percent is the minimum for a house you have walked. Twenty percent is what you use when the seller will not let you open walls, when the city is slow, or when your contractor is a phone number you met this week. The calculator shows both so you can pick the pad that matches how well you actually know the asset.

Feed this total into the flip, wholesale, BRRRR, and lender calculators. Do not retype a round number you like better. The whole point of DealCrunch Pro is one set of math. If the rehab estimator says $48,400 with a 20% pad and your flip only works at $32,000, the flip does not work. The estimator is not being mean. The house is.

Common miss: windows listed at $0 because 'they look fine from the yard.' Another: electrical at $500 on a 1978 panel. Another: kitchen at big-box vanity prices when the layout has to move a sink. Price the ugly version. You can always come down after bids. You cannot add twenty thousand after you are in contract at a number that assumed paint and carpet.

This is not a five-hundred-SKU catalog and it is not trying to be. It is the offer-stage budget you can finish in a driveway. When you are under contract, replace these lines with actual bids. Until then, fourteen trades plus contingency beats a vibe.

The identities

Total = Σ trades
With pad = Total × 1.10 or Total × 1.20

Per square foot is total trades divided by living area, before contingency.

How people blow the result

• Stuffing unknown work into Misc until Misc is the biggest line.
• Skipping contingency because the seller 'already started the rehab.'
• Using retail finish prices on a house that still needs dry-in.

FAQ