Wholesale Real Estate Calculator: Find Your Max Offer in Seconds

Written by

Alex Martinez — Founder & CEO, Real Estate Skills. Has wholesaled and flipped houses for over a decade, personally acquiring 33+ residential investment properties.

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Reviewed by

Ryan Zomorodi — Co-Founder & COO, Real Estate Skills. Reviewed and verified the calculator walkthrough, formulas, and deal-analysis methods in this guide before publication.

✓ Updated June 2026 ✓ Fact-Checked 📊 Free Deal Calculator Inside Watch on YouTube

Publication history: Originally published June 9, 2023. Updated June 2026 with an interactive ARV & MAO calculator, the MAO formula explained, a full breakdown of every input, multiple real worked deals, a repair-cost estimating guide, and a calculator-focused FAQ. Calculator walkthrough and methods verified by Ryan Zomorodi, Co-Founder & COO of Real Estate Skills.

Most people who fail at wholesaling don't fail at finding deals. They fail at the math. They get a property under contract at a number that looked fine in their head, then can't find a single cash buyer who'll touch it — because the price never left room for the buyer to profit. The calculator exists to stop exactly that. It's how you know, before you make an offer, whether a property is a real deal or a waste of a phone call.

Here's the whole thing in one sentence: you work backward from what the house will sell for once it's fixed up, subtract what it'll cost to fix and what your buyer needs to make, and what's left is the most you can offer. That's your Maximum Allowable Offer. Offer under it and you've got something you can actually assign. Offer over it and you're stuck with a contract nobody wants.

This guide walks you through running that math the way we actually do it on real deals — what each number means, where to get it, and the one mistake that costs beginners the most deals. You can grab our free wholesale real estate calculator and follow along; it does the arithmetic for you, but the point here is that you understand what it's doing, so you can trust the number it spits out.

Watch: How To Analyze Wholesale Deals & Calculate Offer Price

Alex Martinez analyzes a real deal start to finish — building the ARV from comps, estimating repairs, and reverse-engineering the offer price — in about 11 minutes.

 

What Is A Wholesale Real Estate Calculator?

A wholesale real estate calculator — you'll also see it called a deal analyzer or a wholesale deal calculator — does one job: it answers the only question that matters before you make an offer. What's the most I can pay for this and still make money? Get that number right and you have a deal you can assign. Get it wrong and you've either overpaid for a contract no buyer wants, or lowballed so hard the seller signed with someone else.

Here's what's actually happening under the hood. You're not pricing the house the way a regular buyer would. You're reverse-engineering it. You start at the end — what the property sells for after it's renovated — and work backward, pulling out the cost to fix it, the profit your cash buyer needs, and the fee you want to earn. Whatever's left is the most you can offer the seller. That's your Maximum Allowable Offer, or MAO, and it's the single output every wholesale calculator is built to produce.

The tool matters because wholesaling runs on speed and certainty, and your head is bad at both. You'll talk yourself into a number because you like the property, or because the seller seems motivated, or because you've already spent two weeks on the lead. The calculator doesn't care how you feel about the deal. You give it three real numbers and it hands you a price — the same price every time, in seconds, so you can analyze ten properties in the time it'd take to agonize over one. More analysis means more offers, and more offers is the whole game.

A good calculator factors in:

• ARV (After Repair Value) — what the property will sell for once it's fully renovated. This is your anchor; everything else works backward from it.
• Repair costs — a realistic estimate of what your cash buyer will spend to get it to that ARV.
• Your rule percentage — the share of ARV that leaves a safe margin (70% is the standard starting point, adjustable by market).
• Your assignment fee — what you want to earn for putting the deal together.

Run those through the math and you get your MAO. Negotiate under it, and you've got a wholesale deal worth chasing. Can't get the seller under it, and the calculator just saved you from a bad contract — which is the tool doing its job, not failing at it.

One thing worth saying plainly, because it's where this calculator parts ways with the simple formulas you'll find everywhere else: the best wholesalers don't analyze to a generic rule. They analyze to a specific cash buyer's numbers. We'll get into why that's the difference between an offer that gets accepted and one that gets ignored — but keep it in mind as we go, because it's the thread that runs through everything below.

Wholesaling itself — what it is, how the contracts work, whether it's legal in your state — is a bigger topic than this page. If you're brand new, start with our guide to wholesaling for beginners; for the legal side, see whether wholesaling is legal in your state. This page stays focused on the calculator and the numbers.

The Wholesale Real Estate Calculator (Run Your Deal Now)

Here's the tool. You can run a real deal through it right now — pull up a property you're looking at, drop in the numbers, and watch the math work backward to your offer price.

Three steps, and the calculator handles the arithmetic:

Step 1: Build Your ARV From Comps

Enter the sold price and square footage for two to five renovated comparable sales. The tool finds each one's price per square foot, averages them, and applies that to your property's size. This is the right way to do it, because it's how an appraiser values the home when your buyer eventually resells — more on pulling good comps in the next section. If you already have an ARV from an appraisal or a broker, you can override the comp average and enter it directly.

Step 2: Set Your Repair Budget And Your Rule

Drop in your estimated repair costs, then set the ARV-to-offer percentage with the slider. It defaults to 70% — the standard floor — and you tighten or loosen it based on your market and your buyer (we get into when and why below). The calculator instantly shows your Maximum Allowable Offer: that's the ceiling for your end buyer, the most they'd pay and still hit their margin.

Step 3: Add Your Assignment Fee To Find Your Contract Price

This is the part most calculators skip and the part that matters most to you. Your MAO is the buyer's number. Your contract price sits below it — by the size of your fee. Enter the fee you want, and the calculator tells you exactly what to get the property under contract at so that your buyer still lands at their MAO and you still get paid. That gap, between what you contract at and what your buyer pays, is your money.

There's also a deeper layer if you want it: open the net-profit section and enter your real purchase price, holding costs, and selling costs, and the tool projects the actual net profit and ROI your cash buyer would see on the flip. You don't need it to make an offer — the MAO alone gets you there — but it's how you start seeing the deal through your buyer's eyes, which is exactly the skill that separates wholesalers who get their offers accepted from the ones who don't.

A word on what the tool is and isn't. A comp-based ARV is a starting point, not an appraisal — it's only as good as the comps you feed it, so the next two sections are about getting those inputs right. And these are estimates for analyzing a deal, not a guarantee of what you'll make; outcomes vary by market, by buyer, and by how accurate your numbers are. The calculator's job is to keep you from making an offer you can't justify. What you do with the number is up to you.

Stop Guessing. Calculate Your Exact Offer in Seconds.

Wholesaling is a numbers game. If your math is off by even a few percent, your assignment fee disappears — or you lock up a deal no cash buyer will touch. Don't risk it on back-of-the-napkin math. Download our Free Deal Calculator Spreadsheet to instantly determine your Maximum Allowable Offer (MAO), factor in repairs and costs, and lock in your profit spread with confidence before you ever make an offer.

Watch: Using the Wholesale Deal Calculator Line by Line

Want to see every line walked in depth? Ryan Zomorodi runs a full deal through this exact calculator — start to finish, every input explained — with a beginner asking the questions you're probably thinking.

 

The Inputs Explained: ARV, Repairs, Rule, and Fee

The calculator is only as good as what you feed it. Garbage in, garbage out — and on a wholesale deal, garbage out means an offer no buyer accepts or a contract you can't assign. So here's how to get each number right, starting with the two that matter most.

ARV — And Why Comps Are Non-Negotiable

Your After Repair Value is what the property sells for once it's renovated, and you find it the same way a professional appraiser does: comparable sold properties. Not active listings, not what the seller thinks it's worth — sold homes that have already closed. Here's the comp criteria we've used for over a decade, and it's worth following exactly, because it's not arbitrary:

• Sold and renovated, within the last 6 months. You want the future sale price of your property once it's fixed up, so you compare against homes already in that finished condition. Six months is as far back as you go — the market moves.
• Same bed and bath count. A 3-bed/2-bath gets compared to other 3/2s, not a 5-bed. Apples to apples.
• Within ±20% of your square footage. A 1,100-square-foot house gets compared to roughly 900–1,300 square feet, not a 2,000-square-foot home.
• Same city and zip, ideally the same neighborhood, within a half-mile radius. Different zip codes mean different schools, taxes, and demand. You're trying to eliminate differences, not introduce them.

Here's why those rules are the rules, and this is the part most guides skip: when your cash buyer eventually renovates and resells, the end buyer almost always gets a mortgage, and the bank sends an appraiser. That appraiser values the home using exactly this criteria — half-mile radius, sold in the last six months, similar size, same bed/bath, same area. So when you comp a property this way, you're not using some wholesaler's homemade method. You're valuing the property the way it will actually be valued at resale. Do anything looser than that and your ARV won't hold up when it counts.

In practice it's simple math. Say you pull three renovated, sold 3/2s near your subject property: one at $540,000, one at $545,000, one at $550,000. Average them and you're at $545,000. Those comps are tight and similar, so you can put your ARV at $545,000 with real confidence. That's the number that anchors the whole deal. If you want it laid out step by step, we put the full comp criteria on a one-page comps cheat sheet you can grab here.

One honest edge case: sometimes a distressed property has no renovated comps in range — usually in rural areas. That's not a small problem; it's often a signal the deal won't work, because if you can't establish the ARV, neither can your cash buyer, and no serious investor takes on a renovation when they can't see where it sells. There's an occasional exception — say your subject is a 2/1 in a neighborhood full of 3/2s, and you could add square footage to convert it — but that's an advanced play, and the honest default is this: no comps usually means no deal.

If you want a deeper walkthrough on pulling comps and estimating value, our ARV calculator guide goes through it in detail.

Watch: Pulling Comps and Building an ARV on a Real Property

Alex Martinez walks the comp criteria on a real property — how to find the ARV, why those specific rules mirror a bank appraisal, and what to do when the comps aren't obvious.

 

Repair Costs — The Number Beginners Blow

This is the input people get most wrong, and it's the one that quietly eats your deal. We cover the how-to in depth in the next section, but for the calculator: you need a realistic estimate of what your buyer will spend to reach that ARV. A fast way is a per-square-foot estimate for the cosmetic work, with big-ticket structural items added on top. The key word is estimate — get it wrong and you've handed your buyer a budget that doesn't cover the job, and they'll walk.

The Rule Percentage

This is the share of ARV that builds in your buyer's margin, and 70% is the standard starting point — not a law. We'll get into adjusting it in the formula section. For now, know that the slider exists because the right number depends on your market and your specific buyer.

Your Assignment Fee

What you want to earn. Our baseline is at least $10,000 — enough to make a deal worth the work without inflating it to the point your offer stops being competitive. You can aim higher, but the bigger your fee, the lower you have to get the property under contract, and the harder that gets. Start at $10,000 and adjust from there.

The Input That Ties It All Together: Your Buyer's Actual Numbers

Here's the thread we've been pulling. The 70% rule treats every cash buyer as identical. They're not. A fix-and-flipper needs the biggest discount; a buy-and-hold landlord will pay more for the same house; a developer values the land differently. The way you stop guessing is you ask them two questions: what's your minimum net profit per deal, in dollars, and what's your minimum deal ROI, as a percentage? One cash buyer we've sent over 50 deals to has a standing answer — at least $25,000 net profit and a 15% deal ROI on every flip. Once you know a buyer's two numbers, you stop plugging in a generic rule and start solving for a real person who's told you exactly what they'll buy. That's the input that turns a calculator from a formula into a deal-closing tool — and it's why pros land offers the rule-followers don't.

The Wholesale Formula (and Why the 70% Rule Loses Deals)

You'll see one formula everywhere online, usually called the 70% rule:

MAO = (ARV × 70%) − Repair Costs − Your Wholesale Fee

It's simple, and it works as a first filter. Multiply the ARV by 70%, subtract repairs, subtract your fee, and you've got a quick offer price you can run on your phone. The 70% builds in a roughly 30% cushion that covers your buyer's profit plus their holding costs, closing costs, and the things that go wrong. For a five-second gut-check on whether a property is even worth a closer look, it's fine.

But here's the problem, and it's the reason most wholesalers lose deals they should win: the 70% rule assumes every cash buyer is the same. It bakes in a 30% margin for everyone. So what happens when you're up against an investor who's perfectly happy making 20%? You lose. They can offer more than you can, every time, because your formula forced a fatter cushion than the deal actually needs. In a competitive market, the rigid 70% rule isn't protecting you — it's pricing you out.

Watch what that costs on a real deal. Take a San Diego property: comps put the ARV at $775,000, repairs run about $70,000, and you want a $20,000 fee. Run the 70% rule and your offer comes out to $452,500. Now run the same deal solving for a real buyer's criteria — a 10% deal ROI, which plenty of cash buyers in that market accept all day — and the math supports an offer of $560,000. Same property, same ARV, same repairs. The rule says offer $452,500. The real calculation says you can offer $560,000 and still pay yourself $20,000. That's a $107,000 gap. Which offer do you think the seller accepts?

It's not a fluke of one market. On a different property — $600,000 ARV, $60,000 repairs, $10,000 fee — the 70% rule caps the offer at $350,000, while calculating to the cash buyer's actual numbers supports offering around $445,000. A $95,000 difference, again in the wholesaler's favor. The pattern holds because the mechanism is always the same: the rule guesses at the buyer's margin; the real calculation knows it, because you asked.

So here's the formula the pros actually use, and it's even simpler than the 70% rule once you understand it:

Cash Buyer's Price − Your Fee = Your Offer Price

That's it. Figure out what your specific buyer will pay for the property — using their two numbers from the last section, their minimum net profit and minimum deal ROI — then subtract the fee you want, and that's the price you get the property under contract at. The whole game is knowing your buyer's price. Once you do, the rest is subtraction.

This is exactly what the calculator does, and exactly why we built it to solve for ROI instead of slapping on a flat 70%. You're not pricing to a rule of thumb; you're pricing to a real person who's told you what they'll buy.

None of this means the 70% rule is useless — it's a genuinely good quick screen, and if you ever get a property under 70% of ARV minus repairs, that's a strong deal for almost any buyer, and you should probably grab it. Just don't let it be the only tool you use, because the moment you're competing against someone who calculates, the rule-follower loses.

Want the formula itself broken down in depth — where the 70% comes from, the math behind adjusting it, and the full theory? We cover that in our guide to the MAO formula and the complete wholesale formula breakdown. This page keeps the focus on running the numbers; those go deep on the math.

When To Adjust The 70%

Quick guidance, since the slider lets you: in a hot, competitive market, cash buyers will push to 75% or even 80–85% of ARV minus repairs to win properties — the buyers we work with operate in the 80s and take those deals all day. In a slower or declining market, drop toward 65% to build in extra cushion, because your comps may be stale by the time the deal closes. But the percentage is just a proxy for your buyer's real margin — which is why, whenever you can, you skip the proxy and calculate to their actual numbers instead.

Wholesale Calculator Examples: Two Real Deals

Numbers stick better than theory, so here are two real deals run the way we actually run them. Watch how the same formula produces very different offers depending on the property — and how each one leaves room for a fee.

Two things to pull from these. First, the repair number isn't fixed — $40/sq ft on one deal, $65/sq ft on another — because it depends on the market, the scope, and who's doing the work. That's the next section. Second, notice what's constant: in both deals, the real calculation beat the 70% rule by roughly $95,000–$107,000, and in both, the fee survived. That's the entire argument for using a calculator that solves for your buyer instead of a blanket rule.

A note on these numbers: these are real deals, and your results will look different. The figures depend on your market, your comps, your repair accuracy, and your specific buyer's criteria — outcomes vary, and no deal is guaranteed. The point isn't to memorize these numbers; it's to run your deal through the calculator the same way.

How to Estimate Repair Costs (The Input Beginners Blow)

Of the numbers you feed the calculator, this is the one beginners get wrong most often — and it's costly, because a blown repair estimate doesn't just shrink your margin, it eats it. Underestimate repairs (and people usually underestimate repairs while overestimating ARV at the same time), and you hand your buyer a budget that doesn't cover the job. They run the real numbers, the deal doesn't work for them, and they walk. That's how a lot of wholesalers get a contract they can't assign.

Here's the method we actually use to estimate fast, before we've even seen a property in person.

The Quick Screen: Cosmetic Per-Square-Foot, Then Big Items À La Carte

For a fast first pass, use a per-square-foot rule for the cosmetic work, then add structural and system items separately. A purely cosmetic fixer — paint, flooring, cabinets, landscaping, fixtures; lipstick, not moving walls — might run somewhere in the range of $20–$30 a square foot. A full gut with a new kitchen, baths, and mechanicals can climb to $60–$80+ a square foot. So a 1,100-square-foot cosmetic fixer at around $35/sq ft works out to roughly $38,500 — round it to $40,000 and move on.

Then layer the big-ticket items on top. The per-square-foot number is only for cosmetic work. If the property also needs a cracked-slab repair, that might be a $20,000 line item on top of your $40,000 cosmetic estimate — call it $60,000 total. A new roof might add $10,000–$15,000. Structural and system items get added separately because they're not what the per-foot rule is built to capture.

Why the Ranges Are Ranges — And This Is the Important Part

Those numbers aren't gospel, and anyone who hands you a single fixed figure is doing you a disservice. The right number depends on your market, the finish level the neighborhood demands, and — crucially — who's doing the work. A high-volume flipper with their own crews might renovate at $35 a square foot; a newer investor without those relationships pays $60 for the same job. That's not a small gap; it can swing your whole estimate. It's also exactly why the two deals in the last section used $40 and $65 a square foot — different markets, different scope, different buyers.

Which points to the smartest move you can make on this input: don't trust a number off the internet — ask your cash buyers. They renovate properties for a living. They have rules of thumb dialed in for their own crews and their own market. Ask three to five of them what they budget per square foot, and you can build a reliable range from real answers — "everyone I talked to uses $35 to $40" — instead of guessing. That range will beat any generic figure, because it's tied to the people who'll actually buy your deal.

And remember who's paying for all this: not you. As a wholesaler, you never pay for repairs — your cash buyer does. You're estimating their cost so your offer leaves them room to profit. That's the only reason this number matters to you, and it's the whole reason getting it right protects your fee.

Two honest caveats. First, you'll get better at this with reps — nobody starts out good at estimating repairs, and the more deals you analyze, the sharper both your repair numbers and your ARV get. Second, a per-square-foot estimate is a screening tool, not a contractor's bid. For a deal you're serious about, your buyer will get real numbers from their own contractors before they close — your job is to be close enough that the deal still works when they do.

This is educational guidance for analyzing deals, not a renovation budget you should rely on for actual construction — repair costs vary widely by market and property, and you should confirm real numbers with contractors and your cash buyers before committing to a deal.

Key Wholesale Calculator Terms (Glossary)

You'll run into these terms throughout the calculator and every deal you analyze. None of them are complicated once they're in plain language — so here they are.

Wholesale Real Estate Calculator FAQs

Final Thoughts on the Wholesale Real Estate Calculator

Wholesaling comes down to one number: the most you can offer and still get paid. Get that number right and everything downstream gets easier — you make offers with confidence, you stop chasing deals that were never going to work, and you bring your cash buyers properties they actually want. Get it wrong and you're either losing deals you should win or locking up contracts you can't assign.

The calculator is how you get it right, but the real edge isn't the tool — it's understanding what it's doing. Anyone can multiply ARV by 70% and subtract repairs. What separates the wholesalers who close from the ones who quit is that they know their numbers cold: they pull real comps, they estimate repairs honestly, and they price to a specific cash buyer instead of a generic rule. That's why their offers come in $90,000 or $100,000 higher than the rule-followers' on the same property — and still leave a fee.

And not every property is a deal. Most aren't. Roughly one in ten offers turns into a closed deal once you're good at this, fewer when you're starting out — and that's normal, not failure. The calculator telling you to walk away is it working exactly as intended. The wholesalers who last are the ones who trust the math, make the offer the numbers support, and move on to the next one without getting attached.

So run your deals. Pull the comps, estimate the repairs, know your buyer's criteria, and let the number tell you where to offer. Download the free calculator, put it to work on a real property today, and start making offers you can stand behind. That's how a first deal turns into a business.

About the Author

Alex Martinez

Alex Martinez is the Founder and CEO of Real Estate Skills. With more than a decade of investing experience and 33+ residential properties acquired, he has personally wholesaled and flipped houses across the country, analyzing thousands of deals with the same calculator and methods covered in this guide. Through Real Estate Skills, Alex and his team have helped thousands of students learn how to analyze deals, make competitive offers, and close profitable wholesale transactions.

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This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Real estate investing involves risk, and the calculations, figures, and examples shown here are estimates for analyzing deals — not guarantees of results. Outcomes vary widely by market, property, and individual circumstances. Real Estate Skills is an educational company and does not sell investments or provide individualized financial advice. Before making any investment decision, consult qualified professionals — including a licensed attorney, accountant, or financial advisor — about your specific situation. Always conduct your own due diligence and verify all numbers independently before committing to any transaction.