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TV flippers finish in a weekend. You will not.

This matters more than most investors realize, because renovation time isn't just a scheduling question — it's a cost question. Every day you own that property, the meter is running. Bridge loan interest, utilities, insurance, taxes. The clock starts at closing and doesn't stop until you sell or refinance. Know your timeline before you buy, not after.

Ask your contractor how long the job will take, then add 21 days for bad weather and sorry excuses. Not because contractors are dishonest — most aren't — but because suppliers run late, weather doesn't check your schedule, and occasionally a subcontractor's personal life becomes your problem. The buffer isn't pessimism. It's experience wearing a hard hat.

If you have a few projects behind you, study your average renovation burn rate — how much work actually gets done per week in dollars. For many operators, that number lands around $10,000 per week. An $80,000 rehab budget means roughly eight weeks of actual work. Track this across four or five projects and you'll have your own number, which is better than anyone else's estimate.

Use both methods. If they agree, you have confidence. If they diverge, find out why before you close.

This is why serious investors translate everything into formulas before they ever make an offer. Renovation time, holding costs, days on market, closing timelines — all of it feeds into a pro forma projection that tells you whether a deal works before you're committed to it. We'll build that whole picture piece by piece in the weeks ahead.

Or rather, they shouldn't be. If your project requires permits — and you should know this during due diligence, before closing — find out exactly how long those permits take in that jurisdiction. This varies wildly. Some counties turn them around in a week. Others will have you paying interest on an empty property for two months while paperwork moves at the speed of bureaucracy.

Paying bridge loan interest on a house that's just sitting there waiting for a permit is a special kind of painful. It is entirely avoidable. Do the homework before you buy.

Renovation Time = Permit time + actual work time + 21 days

Permits first if required, then the work, then your buffer. Run that number against your daily holding cost — which we'll cover in a future issue — and you'll know your total project cost with real precision.

The shows will tell you about the rehab budget, the sale price, and the profit, occasionally pausing to acknowledge that yes, there were commissions involved. What they won't mention: holding costs, cost to sell, overhead, and capital costs. These are not small numbers. They are the difference between the profit on the whiteboard and the deposit in your account.

Know your renovation time. Know your daily cost. Multiply. That's what the project actually costs.

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