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Fix and Flips

Rehab Valuator Review: Great Tool for Flippers, Wholesalers, and Rentals

Last Updated on February 25, 2022 by Mark Ferguson

Rehab Valuator is a real estate investing program that analyzes properties for flipping, wholesaling or renting. I had the opportunity to try it out and provide my own Rehab Valuator Review. The Rehab Valuator is a great tool and the lite version is absolutely free. It helps you estimate repairs, calculates financing costs, figure returns and profits. I am constantly writing about the costs involved in flipping because so many beginners underestimate them. The Rehab Valuator program does a great job of figuring all the costs for you and even figures the 70 percent rule, which many flippers go by.

I don’t review many products on InvestFourMore, because I only endorse products I believe in. I have tried out many products that I thought were lacking in substance or extremely overpriced and you don’t hear about those products, because I don’t feel they deserve any publicity. I have tried out more than a few real estate investing programs and most of them are not worth the money. This is one of the few products that I feel is worth the money.

How can Software help house flippers?

The Rehab Valuator Software is extremely easy to use. Daniil Kleyman created the program, who is an extremely experienced real estate investor. He has invested in many rentals, flips, and commercial projects. The program helps fix and flippers in a number of ways including determining financing costs, figuring repairs, determining closing costs and carrying costs. When I first tried out the program I was able to determine the potential profit on one of my flips in about five minutes.

The program is in an excel sheet that prompts you to enter the important data on a flip; loan terms, repair estimates, length of the rehab, purchase price, closing costs, selling costs and after repaired value. The form gives pre-populated values and percentages for common costs of these items and is very accurate in my experience. The program then tells you the potential profit, the cash needed and the return on your investment.

Financing costs

The program is great for flippers because they have many features built in for hard money loans. You can choose a loan amount based on the ARV, you can choose the points to be paid when you sell the house like you would with hard money. If you have other types of financing, then that can be entered into the program as well, but it is a little trickier. I could not find a way to enter a loan to value amount on the purchase price, but I could adjust the percentage of the ARV loan percentage until I reached my loan amount.

Repair costs

The program has a separate page just for repair costs on flips. The program does not give you common costs for repairs, which is understandable since costs can vary so much depending on the scope of work and your location. The form lists many repairs that would need to be done; you enter a dollar amount for the repairs, a time frame to complete them and the form computes the repairs and time frames into the entire equation.

Carrying costs and selling costs

Many investors forget about carrying costs when flipping homes. You have to account for insurance, taxes, utilities, and maintenance when you hold a property for months. The Rehab Valuator lets you input all the holding costs as a lump sum or enter each cost on a monthly basis. The program then calculates the costs based on the number of months you will hold the property. The program also lets you enter the selling costs as a percentage of the selling price. Those costs would include commission, title insurance, recording fees and a few more.

Profit

When you enter all the data into the program, it gives you a total profit number and return on your investment. I used numbers for a flip I am almost done with and my profit came out to $68,000 and a 78 percent return on my investment. I like those numbers and I will detail this flip in my fix and flip update articles. The great thing about the profit number is you can change financing terms or length of time you hold the property to instantly see how much your profit changes. The program even has a spot where you can enter a percentage of the profit to be split with the lender or an investor.

My  Rehab Valuator review: Can it help wholesalers?

The Rehab Valuator has some great features for wholesalers as well. There is a very simple program to determine what price a wholesaler would have to buy a house to sell it to an investor who would flip the house. Enter the ARV, the repairs and the profit the wholesaler takes, and you get the price you can pay for the property. The only issue I saw with this calculator was you can enter carrying costs and closing costs, which decrease the offer price even more. In my experience, the 70 percent rule works without having to enter holding or carrying costs as additional expenses. You can also adjust the 70 percent value to be 65 percent, 75 percent or whatever value you want.

WholesalePresentation

Another great part of the program is it generates detailed, professional reports that you can give to investors who may want to buy the wholesale deal. You plug in the numbers for the repairs and other costs and the Valuator generates the report that will make you look like it was created by a professional. The more information you can give to the investor, the more comfortable they will feel buying a house from you.

What about rental properties?

Rehab Valuator also has a program that calculates returns on rental properties. This program is similar to the flip program as far as the data you enter but gives different figures for returns, cash flow and lets you include information on refinancing.

Financing costs

When you enter the loan terms, you use the same form as when you entered loan terms for the flip. You can then enter terms for a refinance after you repair the property. This is a nice feature because it lets you see what your returns and costs would be if you use hard money to refinance into a conventional loan. The only problem with this form is I could not turn off the refinance feature, so if I wasn’t refinancing I have to change the numbers around on the refinance terms to match my original loan. I can change the numbers pretty easily to match my interest rate and loan amount to what the original loan would be.

Repair costs

You can enter the repair costs just as you would with the flip calculator and it will factor those into your repairs. The program also tells you exactly how much cash you will have invested in the rental property after down payments, repairs, and closing costs.

Cash Flow and Cash on Cash

The rental property program will take all the figures you plug into it and give you cash flow, cash on cash returns, cap rate, and even DCR. The DCR is the debt coverage ratio and is a tool many lenders use to evaluate how good of an investment your rental is. The program has more forms where you would input the monthly expenses including vacancies and maintenance to come up with the cash flow.

The rental property Valuator and the flip Valuator can both be seen on the same page to help you determine whether it is better to rent the house or flip it. I wish I could see the rental property numbers on their own without the flip Valuator, but that is not a feature yet. If you are using different types of financing on the rental versus the flip, you have to manually change all the financing numbers to see a comparison.

PrivateLenderFlipSheetHow Rehab Valuator can help you get private money funding

Rehab Valuator also has many reports that can be created to help find investors or private money. You can attach pictures, enter comparable property information and couple that with the flipping or rental property numbers to create a professional looking report. If you are trying to secure private money or a partner, they are going to want a lot of information. Those investors will not want that information scratched onto napkins or lose notebook paper. The more professional the package is the better chance you have getting investors to give you money.

How easy is the program to use?

The program is very simple to use and comes with video instructions if you have any problems. The program also has great customer support if you need personalized assistance to get it up and running. I was able to get started right away as it is very straightforward. Each number you enter into the program is on a numbered line and each number line has instructions on what the figure is and what it means to you. The tricky part comes in with some of the financing options if you are not using hard money with a flip or you are not refinancing a rental property. You can still work around those items and there may be a better way to enter information that I have not found yet.

Conclusion

I think the Rehab Valuator is a great tool for flippers, wholesalers or buy and hold investors. The Rehab Valuator lite version is available for free here. The lite version does not come with every feature I described here, but it gives you a great idea of the functionality of the program.

7 thoughts on “Rehab Valuator Review: Great Tool for Flippers, Wholesalers, and Rentals

  1. What do you think about buying smaller/older houses,1300 sqft and below, in nicer neighborhoods (ideally the subject home is surrounded by larger homes) and building additions on, adding to the sq ft?

    1. Hi Stan, That all depends on your market and if the comps support the cost of adding square footage. That could be a very good strategy depending on if you are looking to flip or rent.

  2. Have you ever considered the people you might be kicking out of apartments (I live in San Francisco where Ellis-Act evictions are out of control) to make money passively? Just curious.

    1. Hi Lisa, I had never heard of that before since i am in Colorado. I think the Ellis-Act from what I see is the complete opposite of passive income. It is used to relocate tenants when the use of a building changes from a rental to a single family or condo, which would then be sold. It has nothing to do with passive income but changing the zoning from passive to something else. I don’t think that has anything to do with my strategy or anything discussed on this site.

  3. Do you intend to rehabilitate that property? The Rehabvaluator software identifies which rehabs and flips are profitable and which should be avoided. Real estate rehabbing software takes away all of the guesswork, making your task much easier and more fun. It’s a wise investment strategy.

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