Estimating Rehab Costs: A Guide by J. Scott

LucasLucas: August's Book on the Shelf

Title: The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs

Authors: J. Scott

8 Dimensions of Wellness: Financial

Take-aways: If you're looking to flip a house, or get into BRRRR (Google it), you need to have a basic knowledge of rehabbing. This book gives you that.

You'll LOVE this book if: you're looking for a very tactical, practical guide to estimating rehab costs flips and BRRRR.

DON'T read if: you have no interest in real estate.

Reasons I love this book: I enjoy going from deep dives into the philosophical and psychological nature of humans, to more practical and tactical approaches to solving problems. This book is the latter.

J. Scott, and the whole team at BiggerPockets.com, has a tremendous amount of experience in the field of real estate. as part of our family's plan to find financial fitness, we'd like to get into the arena. If you're also looking to use real estate to bolster your wealth, This book is a great way to understand the basics of estimating rehab costs.

Scott does a fabulous job of making the information digestible, and breaking down the components in a way that is easy to reference...

United States on Aug 13, 2023

Grace Coalson: I have built a house myself and rehabbed several. I STILL found this book to very good. Found it to be a quick well laid out read!

United States on Jul 23, 2023

Ryan H.: It’s an interesting read with a lot of information

United States on Jul 03, 2023

M.: good

Canada on May 18, 2023

Alexandre Alves: Gives you a general idea of costs for different parts of an house/apartment.

Germany on Feb 28, 2021

Client d'Amazon: Very good book packed with experience ! It’s one guy’s experience about rehab but it allows you to accelerate 100x learning curve about what will cost you money and what won’t.

Some things could be improved, i will add this for the author for the next version : for example separating houses from appartments (book mostly covers houses). I’m thinking that buying in a big building also has its particularlies about what you can and cannot do. Both considerations would be useful. Would have been great to have metric conversions and euro conversions also. Maybe next release !
In all cases you can buy the book with closed eyes it’s packed with learnings that will save you money.

France on Jun 28, 2020

Amazon customer: One of the overwhelming parts of house flipping, for a relative rookie, is finding a property and you are under the gun to come up with a cost to rehab it that ultimately leads to your offer to the seller. That can be the moment of truth; the make or break for the whole deal. Everyone is looking for the magic bean on how to quickly estimate rehab costs, especially for short sales and foreclosures, where time can be critical. This book, unfortunately, is kind of sold as that magic bean, in my opinion, and it will get you no closer to the beanstalk, unfortunately. It surprises me how highly regarded and recommended this book is on a variety of websites. I found it to be frustrating and vague, at best. I am glad I didn't pay much for it, as I literally leafed through it like a brochure.

First, if you are a contractor (which I am part-time) or someone who has dabbled in rehab work on a few houses and has a little experience (which I also have), the useful content in this book could be about 20 pages long. The author spends the first few pages of the book talking about making a plan for rehab, which includes a SOW (scope of work). This got me excited, picturing walking around...

United States on May 14, 2020

Bob: There are a lot of books about flipping, buying rentals, etc. This book addresses a key pain point for new investors and is masterful in doing so. When you start out down the path of investing, whether it be renting or flipping, you will almost immediately come to the "and then I put _blank_ into it to get it ready to rent/sell." and then you realize...how in the world do I know what ___blank___ is?!

This book systematically breaks down all areas of a property and the types of repairs that one could encounter and then systematically goes through the range of cost for each type of repair, units of measurement for each repair (by square foot? by sheet? etc) and generally prepares you for dealing with contractors and getting estimates for anything you could think of.

If you don't know about construction and contracting costs it can prepare you to ask intelligent questions when getting a quote, know what to expect, and empower you in unfamiliar territory. If you are familiar with various construction costs and related considerations, the systematic approach laid out by J Scott will help you "do your thing" in a repeatable and predictable way, which is the...

United States on Dec 12, 2016