Overview
The dashboard is where most of your assumptions should be entered to run your house flip / rehab analysis. Once filled out, this tab then feeds all the other tabs of the spreadsheet.
Reminder: User’s data must be entered in the blue or red cells (with blue or red font). Those cells are unlocked and can filled out as needed. All other cells (mostly calculated fields) are locked and do not need to be modified to use the spreadsheet as intended.
The dashboard is divided in 5 main sections:
- General Assumptions: Enter property details and purchase date here. This information will be used in most of the spreadsheet’s reports, including the summary report
- Acquisition Assumptions: Enter your purchase price, acquisition costs, holding costs and selling costs in this section
- Repair Assumptions: Select here what repair estimate method you want to use for your analysis. 4 methods are available: Detailed Estimate, Quick Estimate, ARV % and Lump Sum. More information about these methods is available below.
- Financing Assumptions: Enter here your financing plan (how much cash, loans and equity are being used for the rehab), loan and equity investment details as well as investors’ profit sharing assumptions (if applicable)
- Summary Results: This section provides summary figures (project costs, capital requirement, etc.), the estimated project’s profit and profitability indicators as well as a summary of the individual return analysis. This section also includes a Maximum Purchase Price Tool that will help you quickly estimate the maximum offer you can make on a property in order to reach various profitability thresholds (measured with $ profit, ROI, IRR, etc.)
Tip: These sections can easily be grouped by clicking on the [-] group button available on the left side of each area.
General Assumptions
The first step of filing out the spreadsheet is to provide details regarding the property. Although those details are not mandatory to run the analysis, they appear on multiple reports and will help you identify and differentiate the properties you are looking at. Note that the Property Purchase Date must be entered in the mm/dd/yy format (i.e. US date format) and can either be a past or future date depending on the type of analysis you are running (i.e. assessing a project’s viability before purchase or running numbers on an ongoing rehab).
The General Comment field is available for users to add any additional details you may need regarding the project. Note that this field is only displayed in the dashboard and does not feed other reports or tabs.
Acquisition Assumptions
Key assumptions regarding the acquisition process are entered here, including the property’s purchase price and the estimated After-Repair Value as well as acquisition, holding and selling costs.
If you don’t know the property purchase price or if you’re trying to estimate it based on your profitability target, please still enter an estimate in that cell for the spreadsheet to run properly. You can then use the Maximum Purchase Price Tool available at the bottom of the Dashboard to run such analysis.
Holding Costs: As the name implies, holding costs relate to costs associated with holding the property while renovating it. These usually include costs like taxes, utilities, insurance, etc. You can adjust and customize these categories by simply renaming them based on your needs. These costs need to be entered on a monthly basis. You can then adjust the expected holding period by changing both the unit (days, weeks, months) and the duration. As a general estimate, it usually takes anywhere from six weeks to six months to rehab a property. This figure may however significantly vary depending on specific factors such as the size and current condition of the property, the amount of work to be performed, the experience of the rehabber, etc.
Selling Costs: Expected selling costs should also be entered in that section. Customary costs include brokerage fee, commission, title insurance, appraisal, etc.
Repair Assumptions
Select one of the 4 repair estimate methods currently available in the spreadsheet:
- Detailed Estimate: this is the most comprehensive method to estimate a rehab project but it also requires the most time. This estimate is based on the exhaustive list of expenses entered in the Repairs tab where you can describe the full scope of work to be performed, item by item. These expenses are organized by category (which can be renamed in the Repair tab too) and by area. Once filled out, this Repair tab will feed the Repair section of the Dashboard and the associated amounts will be displayed in the “Cost by category” area.
- Quick Estimate: This method is a quicker alternative to the detailed estimate. It enables you to enter a general amount for each your rehab’s cost category without detailing all expenses associated with it. Data used for this method must be entered in the “Cost by Category” area, in the blue cells available next to each of the 24 cost categories.
- Percentage of ARV: This quick method estimates your project’s total repair cost using a % of the expected After-Repair Value of your property. It is ideal for quick and dirty estimates when reviewing multiple opportunities. This method is however less precise than the other two methods described previously and is best used when you already have a general sense of the expected total cost of your project. This method also includes an input for a headroom / contingency amount in addition to the repair estimate itself.
- Lump Sum: As an alternative to the ARV method, you can use this option to assume a fixe $ amount rather than a % of ARV. As with the previous method, this option works best if you are already confident about your repair estimate.
Financing Assumptions
Enter here how you will finance your rehab project. Under the Financing Plan sub-section, you can select whether the purchase price, repair costs, acquisition costs and holding costs are financed with your own cash, a first loan, a second loan or with equity from other investors. For more flexibility, you can also enter a custom amount (“Other Amount”) for each financing option if needed.
For instance, your first loan may cover both the property’s purchase price and some additional expenses. In that case, in addition to selecting the “Purchase Price” amount under the “First Loan” column, you should also enter a custom amount in the “Other Amount” of such column.
Based on the size of the first & second loans as well as the contributions from external investors, the spreadsheet will automatically calculate the remaining amount of cash necessary to complete the project (displayed in the “Cash Needed” column of this sub-section, as well as in the Sources & Uses table).
The next two sub-sections relate to the loan details. Enter here the loans information (% down payment, type of loan, maturity, interest rate, fees, etc.). The number of payments should reflect your holding period.
The Equity Investment Allocation table allows you to list all investors participating in this project and define their respective contribution as well as the associated profit share. By default, the spreadsheet will consider than any external equity is provided by Investor 1 unless you add additional investors in that table. Any profit not allocated to investors is automatically assigned to the rehabber.
Note that you don’t need to enter any detail in the Second Loan Assumptions nor the Equity Investment Allocation sub-sections if not applicable to your project.
Summary Results
The Summary Results section is divided in 4 different blocks:
- Summary Figures: a recap of the project’s costs by category and your capital requirements
- Project Profit: this area will display your project’s expected profit, as well as additional key financial indicators such as expected ROI, annualized ROI and the result of the 70% rule.
- Individual Return Analysis: if you project includes equity from external investors, this table will summarize the allocation of profit among you and the investors, based on the profit share assumptions entered in the Financing section.
- Maximum Purchase Price: this tool lets you quickly estimate the maximum offer you can make on a property in order to achieve your profitability target measured by various financial metrics (rehab profit, ROI, Annualized ROI, IRR and 70% Rule). To run the analysis, first enter the desired profitability for each of the metrics then click on the “Run the Analysis” button. It may take a few moments for Excel to run analysis so it is important not to perform any other action during the calculation. For best result, it is also important to run the analysis based on realistic / meaningful metric levels, otherwise Excel may have difficulties running scenarios which could slow down the spreadsheet.
