All Forum Posts by: David Robertson

Hey Tyrone,

I have a Scope of Work template in my BP Fileplace that you can download at the link below:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/files/user/drobertson/file/sample-contractors-scope-of-work-documents

The SOW document provides detailed SOW notes for 20-ish repair categories from a project I did a few years back that should provide a good example of the level of detail that you need to provide for your contractors.

Checkout Homestyler which is a free web app for creating basic floor plan designs.

https://www.homestyler.com/floorplan/

I recently tried MagicPlan Iphone App, but didn't have any luck getting the app to calibrate properly for taking room measurements, so just measured with a good old fashioned measuring tape.

Hey Jose,

This is my boilerplate response to people for learning how to estimate rehab costs:

#1 Read the Book on Estimating Rehab Costs

JScott's 'The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs' is a great resource for new rehabbers to learn how to Estimate Repair Costs on 25 common rehab repairs.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/store/the-complete-g...

#2 Explore Lowes and Home Depot to Learn About Material Pricing

Take a tour through Lowes and Home Depot (or their websites) and look at finishes materials and fixtures that you will consider using in your rehab projects. This will help you get a better idea of what tile, hardwood, carpet, plumbing fixtures and light fixtures costs for your rehabs.

#3 Contact Local Contractors for Labor Pricing

Call local Subcontractors and get budget pricing for common repairs on your typical rehab project.

For example, call a roofer and ask what their average cost per Square of Architectural Asphalt Shingle Roofing would be on a 1,500 sf house, with a 6/12 pitch.

Note: Some contractors will be reluctant to share pricing without seeing the property, but tell them you are just looking for a rough budget number you can use on future projects.

#4 Compile Your Prices into a Spreadsheet or Estimating Software

Once you start to get a better understanding of Labor and Material costs you will want to store this data into a spreadsheet or software that you can use to help you streamline the estimating process.

The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs comes with a spreadsheet that you can use to help you populate your own database of labor pricing and material pricing. Or you can download my estimating templates I have in my Biggerpockets fileplace:

Simple Estimate Spreadsheet

Detailed Estimating Spreadsheet

There are other Estimating Softwares available as well which can help you manage the Estimating process as well...

#5 Practice, Practice, Practice

Walkthrough potential rehab properties (or find properties virtually online) and practice creating detailed scopes of work, quantifying repairs and estimating rehab costs for the projects.

#6 Get Your First Rehab Project

You can practice all you want, but ultimately you will learn the most about estimating rehab costs by actually rehabbing a house. Getting your first rehab project will require you to create a SOW, talk to contractors, compare and review bid proposals, review budgets, & make countless trips to Home Depot.

​You will inevitably make mistakes and underestimate things, but you will learn 90% of what you know by just doing your first rehab!

If you aren't comfortable estimating costs or aren't willing to put in the work to learn how to estimate rehab costs then you need to Team-Up, Partner, Or Hire Someone Who Can Help You Estimate Rehab Costs.

Pay A GC For A Consultation And Property Walk Through

You can hire a General Contractor to provide a consultation to walk the property for you and provide an detailed estimate breakdown of what they would charge for the repairs to the property. Expect to pay between $200 to $500 to have a contractor provide a consultation.

Partner With Someone That Has Construction Experience

To get your feet wet, you could partner with another house flipper, contractor or construction professional that could help with Estimating Costs.

I think AirTable could be a good option for you as well. 

Hey Stuart, I replied to your PM you sent me.

We do not have a native mobile app, but Flipper Force is a web app so it's built to be mobile responsive.

Admittedly, I think you will get more power out of our software by at the very least using our web app on a tablet device.  Our FlipperForce web app has some pretty detailed tools such as our Repair Estimator & Project Scheduler which are ideally used on larger devices so you can get the full functionality & user experience.

Overall, I think it will be hard to find a dedicated native app that is specifically built for managing flipping and rehabbing houses.  Most SaaS software platforms start by building a web application and then add native apps down the road. Usually the native mobile apps have limited capabilities and don't have the full functionality of the web applications.  

As I mentioned above there are some general project management/task management or construction management softwares that have some pretty solid native apps (Asana, Trello, Clickup, Zoho, AirTable) but again they aren't going to have the full web app functionality.

BuilderTrend & Co-Construct probably have the best native apps for home builders & remodelers so you may want to check them out if you are only wanting to use a native app.

Hi Larry,

It's hard to say if your $30k budget is too low or not, without knowing the scope of work of the project.  

I have done several full remodels of houses around 1,500 to 1,800 sf (new kitchen, new bathrooms, new flooring, new paint, new windows, new fixtures, new wiring) here in Kansas City and they were all over $40k+, so I have a feeling if your SOW is similar you will likely be over $30k.

The only way to truly know is to put together at detailed list of each individual repair that needs to happen on the property.

This is my boilerplate response to people for learning how to estimate rehab costs:

#1 Read the Book on Estimating Rehab Costs

JScott's 'The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs' is a great resource for new rehabbers to learn how to Estimate Repair Costs on 25 common rehab repairs.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/store/the-complete-g...

#2 Explore Lowes and Home Depot to Learn About Material Pricing

Take a tour through Lowes and Home Depot (or their websites) and look at finishes materials and fixtures that you will consider using in your rehab projects. This will help you get a better idea of what tile, hardwood, carpet, plumbing fixtures and light fixtures costs for your rehabs.

#3 Contact Local Contractors for Labor Pricing

Call local Subcontractors and get budget pricing for common repairs on your typical rehab project.

For example, call a roofer and ask what their average cost per Square of Architectural Asphalt Shingle Roofing would be on a 1,500 sf house, with a 6/12 pitch.

Note: Some contractors will be reluctant to share pricing without seeing the property, but tell them you are just looking for a rough budget number you can use on future projects.

#4 Compile Your Prices into a Spreadsheet or Estimating Software

Once you start to get a better understanding of Labor and Material costs you will want to store this data into a spreadsheet or software that you can use to help you streamline the estimating process.

The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs comes with a spreadsheet that you can use to help you populate your own database of labor pricing and material pricing. Or you can download my estimating templates I have in my Biggerpockets fileplace:

Simple Estimate Spreadsheet

Detailed Estimating Spreadsheet

There are other Estimating Softwares available as well which can help you manage the Estimating process as well...

#5 Practice, Practice, Practice

Walkthrough potential rehab properties (or find properties virtually online) and practice creating detailed scopes of work, quantifying repairs and estimating rehab costs for the projects.

#6 Get Your First Rehab Project

You can practice all you want, but ultimately you will learn the most about estimating rehab costs by actually rehabbing a house. Getting your first rehab project will require you to create a SOW, talk to contractors, compare and review bid proposals, review budgets, & make countless trips to Home Depot.

​You will inevitably make mistakes and underestimate things, but you will learn 90% of what you know by just doing your first rehab!

If you aren't comfortable estimating costs or aren't willing to put in the work to learn how to estimate rehab costs then you need to Team-Up, Partner, Or Hire Someone Who Can Help You Estimate Rehab Costs.

Pay A GC For A Consultation And Property Walk Through

You can hire a General Contractor to provide a consultation to walk the property for you and provide an detailed estimate breakdown of what they would charge for the repairs to the property. Expect to pay between $200 to $500 to have a contractor provide a consultation.

Partner With Someone That Has Construction Experience

To get your feet wet, you could partner with another house flipper, contractor or construction professional that could help with Estimating Costs.

I started tinkering in Excel back in 2011 building spreadsheet tools for my own house flipping business.

Once I discovered macros, I went a little crazy and ended up creating one of the most elaborate spreadsheets you've ever seen with calculators, checklists, reports, etc.

Overall I mainly use macros for user interface navigation to help navigate around the massive workbook that has over 50 sheets (click button, navigate to sheet), but I also use macros for sorting data for various reports.

Excel vs Google

Overall Excel has much more power and functionality for creating elaborate spreadsheets. However, I have started using Google Sheets a lot more for basic spreadsheets or checklists because I like that Google Sheets are lightweight, can be easily accessed on my Google Sheets app and are automatically saved to the cloud which makes file management much easier.

I'm seeing the same thing here in Kansas City...we are on mandatory stay at home orders, and yet I had 11 on-site showings on our house we listed this morning 😲...there are definitely still plenty of buyers out there that are looking!

The problem right now is there is a shortage of labor which results in increased demand and increased labor costs.  

With basically everything grinding to a halt right now and a bunch of renovation projects temporarily on hold, there will be a pent-up demand for labor later this year (hopefully when the virus is contained).  

So I wouldn't necessarily expect labor costs to go down in the Summer because contractors could be busier than ever (if things get back to normal).

However, if this thing continues to escalate, a lot of people could be looking for work which you might see some benefit of that...but I wouldn't count on it...

Hard to say, unprecedented times!

Learning to estimate rehab costs is a process that takes time and experience.

This is my boilerplate response to people for learning how to estimate rehab costs:

#1 Read the Book on Estimating Rehab Costs

JScott's 'The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs' is a great resource for new rehabbers to learn how to Estimate Repair Costs on 25 common rehab repairs.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/store/the-complete-g...

#2 Explore Lowes and Home Depot to Learn About Material Pricing

Take a tour through Lowes and Home Depot (or their websites) and look at finishes materials and fixtures that you will consider using in your rehab projects. This will help you get a better idea of what tile, hardwood, carpet, plumbing fixtures and light fixtures costs for your rehabs.

#3 Contact Local Contractors for Labor Pricing

Call local Subcontractors and get budget pricing for common repairs on your typical rehab project.

For example, call a roofer and ask what their average cost per Square of Architectural Asphalt Shingle Roofing would be on a 1,500 sf house, with a 6/12 pitch.

Note: Some contractors will be reluctant to share pricing without seeing the property, but tell them you are just looking for a rough budget number you can use on future projects.

#4 Compile Your Prices into a Spreadsheet or Estimating Software

Once you start to get a better understanding of Labor and Material costs you will want to store this data into a spreadsheet or software that you can use to help you streamline the estimating process.

The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs comes with a spreadsheet that you can use to help you populate your own database of labor pricing and material pricing. Or you can download my estimating templates I have in my Biggerpockets fileplace:

Simple Estimate Spreadsheet

Detailed Estimating Spreadsheet

There are other Estimating Softwares available as well which can help you manage the Estimating process as well...

#5 Practice, Practice, Practice

Walkthrough potential rehab properties (or find properties virtually online) and practice creating detailed scopes of work, quantifying repairs and estimating rehab costs for the projects.

#6 Get Your First Rehab Project

You can practice all you want, but ultimately you will learn the most about estimating rehab costs by actually rehabbing a house. Getting your first rehab project will require you to create a SOW, talk to contractors, compare and review bid proposals, review budgets, & make countless trips to Home Depot.

​You will inevitably make mistakes and underestimate things, but you will learn 90% of what you know by just doing your first rehab!

If you aren't comfortable estimating costs or aren't willing to put in the work to learn how to estimate rehab costs then you need to Team-Up, Partner, Or Hire Someone Who Can Help You Estimate Rehab Costs.

Pay A GC For A Consultation And Property Walk Through

You can hire a General Contractor to provide a consultation to walk the property for you and provide an detailed estimate breakdown of what they would charge for the repairs to the property. Expect to pay between $200 to $500 to have a contractor provide a consultation.

Partner With Someone That Has Construction Experience

To get your feet wet, you could partner with another house flipper, contractor or construction professional that could help with Estimating Costs.