Columbus, Ohio investors... ARV help needed please :)

[Erica Gerhart]

I am looking to purchase a property in Whitehall for $40,000... in the decent area... but I am having trouble finding comps to come up with my ARV to see if it would be a good deal to wholesale... or maybe fix and flip. Values seem to be all over the place in that area.

I came up with $70,000.

It is a 3 bed, 1 bath with partially finished basement, newer windows, larger lot, detached garage, newer siding and roof, 1100 sq feet, built in 1953.

Currently rented for $795.

Anyone have any experience in that area that can tell me if I am way off or in the ballpark?

Thanks in advance!

[Corey Liepelt]

Just looking at Zillow's report of sales in the area in the last 12 months for houses roughly the same size, $70,000 seems reasonable as an ARV. Numbers are all over the place because of the number of houses that have sold in the area that are not repaired and that cannot therefore be included in your comparable sales. Of course, a Realtor could come up with true comps for you that would be far more accurate. But let's play with your $70,000 ARV for a moment.

If you're looking to fix and flip, what do you estimate the repairs to be? If we use a very basic $20/sqft number to roughly calculate repairs (a back of the napkin place to start if you're rehabbing for retail), you would get a repair cost estimate of $22,000. Which means if it's worth $70,000 after repairs, you shouldn't pay any more than $27,000 for it if we use the 70% rule. If you're going to wholesale, you need to pay even less to account for your profit and still have a deal for your buyer.

Now I will admit that's a lot of rough numbers. The $20/sqft estimate and the 70% rule are only lenses through which to quickly look at a property to determine whether you should spend some time analyzing it more closely. If you think it's still worth looking at, go plug your numbers (real numbers, not guesses) into the BP Flipping Calculator and see what it says.