Renovated to my own taste, and rent came in 350 under plan

The other thing that really matters here is the appraisal. Did you look at whether the 41k moved the value? On the lending side I see a lot of live-in renovations where the owner assumes the spend converts into equity and it doesn't, because the neighborhood has a ceiling and a 1963 ranch with a nice kitchen still appraises like a 1963 ranch. If you were counting on that equity for the down payment on the next one, that's the second half of the loss and it's usually bigger than the overrun.

The structural point in harrow's post is worth separating from the execution mistakes, because it applies to everyone running this strategy.

Live-in-then-rent starts from owner-occupant pricing. The property gets bought as a home, at whatever the market asks, with the discount concentrated in the financing rather than in the purchase price. That means the equity cushion most flippers rely on generally isn't there, and renovation spend has to be justified by rent, resale, or the owner's own enjoyment, chosen deliberately in advance. Spending 41k on a 246k house is fine if the rent supports it or if the owner values the year of living in it. It stops working when the spend is charged to the investment case after the fact.

On tender's point about appraisal: renovation cost and appraised value are separate quantities, and the gap between them widens as the improvement exceeds neighborhood norms. Appraisers work from comparable sales in the same area, and roughly a dozen states do not make sale prices public at all, which changes what data is even available to you before you commit. Check what comparable sales in that specific submarket support before assuming an improvement converts to equity.

The scope discipline that would have prevented most of this is ordinary. Price the target rent from signed leases, not asking rents. Then specify finishes to the level those leases show, and treat anything above that as a personal expense you have chosen. The garage width and the single bathroom were fixed features of the property on the day of purchase, and both are things a rent comp analysis would have surfaced before the offer.

The loan remains the durable part of what harrow bought. Rent growth over a long hold is what makes that financing advantage pay.

The six weeks at 2,300 is the part I'd study. That's not a small mispricing, that's the market telling you the house was in a different bracket than you thought, and you found out after 41k was already spent. Four signed comps before the first demo day would have cost you an afternoon.

I'll add the cause nobody wants to hear: living in it while renovating makes everything cost more. Not the materials, the decisions. You can't stage the work efficiently because you need a working kitchen, so you do things twice, and you also stop noticing what a stranger would see because it's your house. I've had two of these and both ran long. The second one I moved into a bedroom with a hot plate for five weeks and it went much better, which tells you what the real variable was.

Slightly outside my lane, but is the 250 a month locked in permanently or just for that lease term? A year from now you renew or re-list and you're pricing against the market again, and the 41k of finishes is still in the house. Seems like the recoverable part of this is bigger than the post implies.

vellum, the finishes will be four years old by the second renewal and tenants don't pay a premium for four year old counters. That money's gone.

harrow, the drain stack thing isn't a mistake, that's just old houses, 3,100 is a fair number for a reroute and anybody who says otherwise hasn't opened a 1963 wall. The counters are the mistake. keystone's right about the sequencing too. I've worked plenty of owner-occupied jobs and the homeowner living there adds real time to every phase, and when the homeowner is also the contractor it compounds.