Bought an NOD lead in Boynton Beach at 61 percent of ARV and had to decide whether to flip or hold it into a rental

The assumption doing the most work in your BRRRR math was the refi LTV, and you named it correctly. At 70 percent of 310k you get 217k, but your all-in was 220,700 before carry, so you were already underwater on the refinance before rates even entered the picture. The DSCR problem came second; the equity problem came first.

The flip math held because your acquisition was disciplined. 61 percent of ARV gave you a real cushion, and the cosmetic scope kept renovation variance tight enough that the 31,200 actual versus your 28k base case did not kill you. The 71-day carry on hard money at that acquisition price is manageable. The 4 percent softening on ARV compressed your exit from a theoretical 310k to 299k, which cost you roughly 11k gross, but you still cleared 58,400 net. That is a real result in a market you do not operate in.

The risk you did not name: you were lending into a market where you cannot walk a problem. Soft drywall in one bathroom is a cosmetic find. If that inspector had flagged anything in the slab or the roof deck on a South Florida house, your ability to respond from outside the market would have been materially worse than a local operator's. The NOD sourcing gave you the price, but distance creates execution exposure that your budget assumptions probably did not price.

Going back to Snohomish makes sense on those terms. Local knowledge is not just comfort, it is a real input into what contingency number you need and how fast you can close a scope gap.

One structural question: on the BRRRR evaluation, were you underwriting at DSCR lending rates or at conventional rates? Because the rate assumption changes the minimum rent needed to service 217k by enough that it is worth knowing which number cracked first.

The number that interests me is the 71-day carry, because on a hard money clock that is longer than it looks. Most hard money notes price the first month into the origination fee and then charge daily on a 360-day year starting at closing, so day 71 at, say, 12 percent annualized on a 189,500 draw is roughly 4,500 in interest alone before you add the points. If your 58,400 net already absorbs that, the deal is as clean as you say it is, but if the carry cost got folded into a closing statement line you did not scrutinize separately, the real margin is a little thinner. The softer ARV is worth noting too: a four percent compression on a 310k comp is about 12,400 off the ceiling, and you still cleared 58k, which means your 61 percent entry did exactly what a margin of safety is supposed to do when the market moves against you during the hold. The risk I do not see addressed is what the NOD timeline looked like relative to your contract date, specifically whether the borrower had cure rights that could have unwound the contract after you had already committed to the hard money draw schedule. In Florida that window can create a gap where your clock is running and your deal is not yet certain. Did the title work flag any redemption period exposure, or was the NOD far enough along that cure was practically off the table by the time you signed?