Wholesaling is a math business wearing a sales costume
A wholesaler gets paid for one thing: knowing what a house is worth to somebody else before that somebody else does. Every script, every skip trace and every door knock exists to put you in front of a seller. What happens after that is arithmetic.
There are only five numbers in the whole business. The after repair value of the house. The real cost of the repairs. The cost of selling it. The fee you need. And the exit — who the finished house is actually sold to. Get those five right and the offer writes itself. Get the fifth one wrong and you will walk away from profitable houses every single week.
Number one: after repair value, from sold comps only
After repair value (ARV) is what the house sells for once it is fixed. Average at least three comparable homes that actually sold in the last six months, within about a mile, similar square footage and bed and bath count. ARV = sum of the sold comp prices divided by the number of comps.
Use sold prices. A list price is somebody's opinion; a sale price is a fact a bank was willing to lend against. If your comps are asking prices, your entire offer is built on a hope.
Number two: repairs, priced by condition and square footage
You do not need a contractor bid to make an offer. You need a defensible range. Price repairs as square footage times a cost per square foot tied to condition: light cosmetic work, dated but functional, or gutted.
A 1,500 square foot house in dated condition at $20 per square foot is $30,000 of repairs. That number moves the offer more than anything else in the deal, so it is the number to be conservative about.
Number three: the cost of sale nobody budgets for
Realtor commissions, seller concessions, title and escrow, transfer taxes, recording fees, the repair credit that shows up after inspection. On a $250,000 sale that is routinely $20,000 to $30,000, and it is the single most common reason a deal that looked profitable pays nothing.
Total expenses = commissions + repairs + concession credit + closing costs. Write it down for every deal before you name a price.
Number four: your fee, decided before you negotiate
Decide what the deal has to pay you before you talk to the seller, not after. That single decision converts the math into an offer: maximum allowable offer = projected sold price - total expenses - your profit goal.
Anything above that number is you paying for the privilege of doing work. Anything below it is room to negotiate.
Number five: the exit, which is where most deals are lost
If the end buyer is a cash investor, they need their own margin, so they will quote you roughly 70% of ARV minus repairs. That caps what you can pay the seller, and it is why sellers who need real money hang up on wholesalers.
If the end buyer is a retail buyer — an owner-occupant using FHA, VA, USDA or conventional financing — they pay close to full market value, because they are buying a home rather than a margin. On the same house that usually supports paying the seller $40,000 to $50,000 more while you still clear your fee.
That is the whole idea behind Retail Buyer Profits, and it is why the same property can be a dead deal and a good deal depending on which exit you priced it for.
Run both exits on the same house, every time
The habit that changes a wholesaling business is simple: never price a house for one exit. Run the investor exit and the retail exit side by side, on the same comps and the same repair number, and offer based on whichever one pays.
The free calculator does both in about sixty seconds and hands you a green, yellow or red signal on the result. Green means make the offer.