What this calculator is solving
A wholesale deal has two prices and one spread. You put a property under contract with the seller at one number, assign that contract to an end buyer at a higher one, and the difference is your fee. The constraint is that the end buyer has their own arithmetic, and if the price you hand them exceeds what the deal is worth to them, there is no deal to assign.
So this page works from the buyer's side inward. It computes what a rehabber could pay for the property, subtracts your fee to find what you can contract at, and reports whether the price you are actually offering the seller leaves room for both of you. It then prices your own position: what you net after costs, and what you have genuinely put at risk to earn it.
Reading the example this page loads with
The defaults describe a deal that does not clear, which is the more instructive case. These figures are illustrative — a teaching example, not market data for any particular city.
| Input | Value |
|---|
| After-repair value (ARV) | $220,000 |
| Repair estimate | $35,000 |
| Target purchase-to-ARV | 70% |
| Contract price offered | $110,000 |
| Your assignment fee | $15,000 |
| Earnest · marketing · title fee | $1,000 · $500 · $300 |
At 70% of a $220,000 after-repair value, less $35,000 of repairs, the end buyer's maximum offer is $119,000. Your contract with the seller is at $110,000, and adding a $15,000 assignment fee puts the price to the end buyer at $125,000 — $6,000 above what the deal is worth to them. The spread exists on paper and not in the market.
There are only two ways to close that gap, and both cost something. Contract with the seller at $104,000 instead, which is $6,000 less than offered, or cut the assignment fee to $9,000. The calculator will not tell you which is available; the seller will.
Why the ROI figure is the least useful number here
If the deal did clear, it would show a net profit of $14,200 — the $15,000 fee less $500 of marketing and $300 of title costs — against $1,500 of capital at risk, the earnest money and the marketing spend. That is a return of about 947%, and the number is close to meaningless.
It is enormous because the denominator is tiny by construction, not because the deal is extraordinary. A return on capital says nothing about the time spent finding the property, the cost of the leads that did not convert, or the probability that this particular contract ever reaches a closing table. Measured against the marketing cost of every deal you worked rather than the one that closed, the figure looks entirely different. Treat it as a reminder that very little money is tied up, which is true and useful, and not as a measure of how good the business is.
The repair estimate is the end buyer's number, not yours
The maximum offer swings directly on the repair figure: every $5,000 of additional repair reduces what the end buyer can pay by $5,000, and in this example only $6,000 of error separates a live deal from a dead one. The estimate that matters is the one your buyer arrives at after walking the property, not the one you used to justify the contract price.
This is the most common way a wholesale deal dies after it is signed. A property marketed at a $35,000 repair figure that a rehabber scopes at $50,000 has lost $15,000 of max offer, which here is the entire assignment fee. Under-scoping repairs does not make the deal better; it moves the discovery to a point where you have already committed and the seller is already expecting to close.
What the 70% figure assumes
The purchase-to-ARV field is the screen your end buyer is using, and 70% is a convention rather than a rule of nature. The 30% it holds back covers their financing costs, holding costs, selling costs and profit margin, which means the right percentage depends on who is buying. A cash buyer with a fast contractor and a low-commission exit can work above 70%; a buyer on hard money with a long timeline needs more room, not less.
If you are consistently finding that deals do not clear at 70%, the useful move is to ask your actual buyers what they are using rather than lowering the field until the arithmetic cooperates. Our article on the 70% rule covers what the 30% is really paying for and where a flat percentage stops working.
What this page deliberately does not model
The legal structure is the part that varies most and the part the arithmetic ignores entirely. Assigning a contract and closing twice are different transactions with different costs, different disclosure obligations and different consequences if the end buyer walks — our article on assignment versus double close covers the distinction. Several states now regulate wholesaling directly, with requirements ranging from disclosure of your position to holding a real estate license, and the rules change often enough that checking your own state before you market a contract is not optional.
The page also assumes the contract is assignable, that your earnest money is genuinely at risk only in the amount entered, and that you have an end buyer. None of those is automatic. A contract without an assignment clause, a non-refundable deposit larger than modeled, or an empty buyer list each turns a $1,500 risk into something else. None of this is legal advice — the structure is worth confirming with a real estate attorney in the state where the property sits.
Checking the deal from the buyer's chair
The most reliable way to know whether a deal will assign is to underwrite it the way the person buying it will. Run the property through the fix and flip calculator at the price you intend to charge them, with their financing and their timeline, and see whether the profit left over is one you would accept. A deal that produces a thin margin for your buyer is a deal you will market for weeks.
If the end buyer intends to hold rather than resell, the BRRRR calculator is the better test, since their exit is a refinance against the after-repair value rather than a sale, and the figure they care about is how much of their capital comes back out.