Deal Analysis Question: What’s the fastest way you estimate ROI on a flip?

Question

Hi BiggerPockets community — I’m excited to be here.

Quick question for experienced flippers:

When you’re evaluating a fixer deal, what’s the fastest way you estimate ROI and risk before going deep into spreadsheets?

I’ve noticed holding costs, rehab surprises, and ARV uncertainty are where most deals go wrong.

I’m building a new tool called FlipScore™ that helps investors quickly score fixer deals (1–10), estimate ROI, and map holding costs instantly — and I’d love feedback from real investors:

✅ What would make a deal scoring/ROI tool genuinely useful for you?

✅ What features do you wish existed that current platforms don’t do well?

Appreciate any insight — excited to learn from this group.

Peter Mckernan · Answer

You need to get to a place where you can see 100 deals drop those to 10 after just quickly looking at them.. The best way is the 70% rule that people talk about.. Or these days I would say the 60% rule due to the market. For example. You know you can sell something for $650,000 all remodeled. You want to find a deal at $400,000 roughly.

This gives you a quick down and dirty way to see a property that comes from a wholesaler or agent and say yes I need to dig in more, or I am going to pass. Once you see something selling by a wholesaler let's say for 425,000 and you can sell it for 650,000.. That is an example, well let's look to see what I think the rehab will be.. If the rehab is on the higher end then keep looking but if it looks like it is a light rehab.. Then you might want to call that wholesaler get in to see it, or see if the seller will drop the price a little bit 15K or 20K to get a better number for you.

Shahinaz Soliman · Answer

Hi Peter — thank you, this is incredibly helpful and exactly the investor workflow I’m trying to build around.

The “see 100 → narrow to 10” mindset is so real, and the 60–70% rule is one of the cleanest quick filters before diving into full underwriting.

That’s actually why we started developing FlipScore™ inside FixerFlip — to give investors a fast first-pass signal based on:

✅ ARV estimate

✅ purchase discount vs ARV

✅ rehab complexity (light vs heavy)

✅ holding cost sensitivity

✅ risk flags

So the app can quickly answer: “Worth a deeper look, or easy pass?”

Really appreciate you sharing the numbers example — do you usually subtract rehab after applying the 60% rule, or bake rehab assumptions into the discount upfront?

Thanks again — this is exactly the type of wisdom newer flippers need.

Deal Analysis Question: What’s the fastest way you estimate ROI on a flip?

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