Updated 11 days ago on .
The reason your ARV keeps missing
Most ARV tools (and most wholesalers I watch) rank comps by recency first. That's appraiser logic. Appraisers are pricing for a 30-year mortgage on a clean transaction. We're pricing for a cash buyer who's going to repeat-hammer the same neighborhood for the next decade.
For us, apples-to-apples beats freshness almost every time. A 6-month-old sale on the same block, same story count, same condition, will out-predict a 30-day-old sale two miles away in a different sub-market. Every single time.
I close around 165 deals a year across 25 states. After a thousand-plus deals, here's how I weight comp similarity now:
- Stories: 27%
- Recency: 25%
- Proximity: 21%
- Sqft: 14%
- Bed: 7%
- Bath: 6%
A few practical rules that fall out of those weights:
A two-story comp matched against a one-story subject is worse than a 6-month-old comp on the same block. Dock it hard. Story count is the single most under-weighted variable in 95% of the comp tools I've used.
±50 to 100 sqft is "match" tolerance. Don't extrapolate PSF for a 1,200 sqft subject off a 1,800 sqft comp. That's how you get $40K swings in your ARV and lose a buyer when the appraisal lands.
Two comps both at $300K? Your ARV is $300K. The textbook "minimum 3 comps" rule was written for appraisers. A clean 2-comp match in a tight tolerance band beats a 3-comp average that drags in junk.
5% deadband on the PSF-vs-price-median blend. If they agree, ARV holds. If they disagree by more than 5%, something's off about the subject (usually sqft from the tax roll, especially if there's a garage conversion or a permit-less addition).
In non-disclosure states (TX, KS, AK, ID, LA, MS, MO, MT, NM, ND, UT, WY) you have no public sold prices. Default to active listings and price 8 to 12% under list for what'll actually transact.
If you screenshot this and check it against your last five deals, you'll find at least one where you used the wrong frame and either left money on the table or lost a buyer at appraisal.
I built a tool around this logic because I needed it. It's called OffrStack. Today is launch day.
It does the comp weighting above automatically, blends a price-median read against the PSF read with the deadband baked in, has a "use comp median" override for when the subject sqft is wrong, flips you to active listings in the 12 non-disclosure states, gives a confidence grade you can defend on the phone, and back-solves max allowable offer for whatever exit strategy you pick (not a generic 70%).
Pricing: Hustler is $49 a month for 30 deals. Closer is $99 for 100. Operator is $299 for 300 with phone support. Mogul is $699 for unlimited and a direct line to me.
First 50 customers get founding-member pricing locked for life of continuous subscription. Annual gets a 7-day money-back window if you change your mind.
If you want to break it, I'd appreciate that more than a polite signup. Reply here or DM me. I built this for people doing real volume and the only way to make it sharper is to let real volume hit it.
Drew