A first full gut that ran 147 days against a 120 day model and still sold at 455.

The mobilization fee to hold the bid is the part I want to steal. My last two guts, the GC bid in March and repriced in June, and both times the repricing was bigger than my whole contingency. Did he actually hold at the original number when you came back, or did he hold the labor and float the materials?

Run it at 430 for me. If the comps had come back 25 lower you're at 46 net on 384 in, which still works, but at 410 you're basically working five months for the carry. Where does the deal actually go negative?

A 455 ARV is a different planet from a thin rural county. Take a market where the top finished comp on the better street is 190 and a gut still costs 85 to 95 because the plumber drives 40 miles each way. 190 x 0.7 = 133, minus 95, and the bid lands at 38 on a house the seller will happily hold at 70. That arithmetic is why almost nobody guts in those markets. They rent it rough instead.

Break the overage down. Structural surprises like joists are usually the visible driver, but a gut renovation running over budget is often eleven separate small things rather than one big one, and that version is harder to defend on a draw request. Worth itemizing each line before presenting it to a lender.

The deal held because of the entry, not the execution. You bought at 142 against a 150.5 ceiling, so you had 8 of slack, and your overruns totaled about 26 (23 scope plus 3 of extra carry). You covered that out of the gap between your 70 rule ceiling and the actual arithmetic of the deal, which is a different cushion than the 8.

Worth being precise about where that came from. Your gross spread was 455 minus 384, so 71. The 70 rule at a 168 budget implied roughly 84 of gross margin at your ceiling price. You spent 26 of overrun and ended at 71, which means the rule's built-in margin absorbed the miss and you still cleared. That is the rule working as designed rather than the renovation working as planned.

The assumption doing the most work is the 455. At 455 you net 71. At 430 you net about 47, because the 25 of price is offset by about 1.5 less in selling cost. At 405 you're near 24 before your own labor, and the deal only reaches zero around 380, roughly 16 percent below your ARV.

On the 147 days, that is inside what current guidance suggests for heavy scope, which is 120 to 150 days of carry as the base case rather than the bad case. Your 120 model was optimistic and your outcome was normal. If you run this again, the contingency change you named matters less than modeling 150 from the start and letting the entry price absorb it. And confirm your draw and extension terms in writing with the lender before you remove contingency, because extension pricing is where a 27 day overrun stops being a rounding error.

Saving the structural engineer walk before contingency removal is usually money well spent. Roughly 900 dollars to know is cheap against the alternative.

Dumb question but I'd rather ask here. When you say carry, is that only the loan interest, or does it include the taxes and utilities too? I'd been modeling just interest and I think that's why my spreadsheets always look better than everyone's actual deals.

Twenty days on an electrical rough-in cycle isn't bad, honestly. It depends heavily on the jurisdiction, and it varies by state and even by township whether a re-inspection slot comes in a week or a month. Were permits pulled directly or through the GC?

I'll push on the 23 being described as the part that nearly broke it. 23 on a 168 budget is 14 percent over, which for a full gut on a 1940s house with water in the basement is a good outcome. The version that breaks people is 168 going to 230, and that usually happens because the framing came apart once they opened the walls and the layout had to change, which then reopens mechanical, which then reopens inspection.

The number I'd actually watch from your post is the 3.5 a month in carry. That's your clock speed. At 3.5 you can absorb a two month slip. I've had guts where the monthly carry was 6 and change, and at that rate a permit delay isn't a scope problem anymore, it's the whole margin.

Also, three mornings a week for five months is roughly 300 hours. Put a number on that when you compare this to whatever else you could have done with 142 of cash.

What was the rent? If the resale market had gone soft in month four, you're all in at 384 on a house that appraises around 455, which is a refi at maybe 341 at 75 percent, leaving 43 of your own money in a rental. Whether that's a fallback or a trap depends entirely on whether it covers the new payment. Did you check that before you bought, or after?

Two years of analysis then a 71 net. I'm eighteen months in with nothing, so this is the thread I needed.