How to Underwrite a Wholesale Deal From Your Phone

The best time to evaluate a wholesale deal isn't at your desk. It's when you're standing in the driveway talking to a motivated seller, or driving a neighborhood and spotting a vacant house, or getting a lead texted to you at 7 PM on a Thursday.

Most deal analysis tools are built for desktops. Spreadsheets don't work on a phone. Pulling comps on Zillow mobile is clunky. Running the math in your head is unreliable.

Here's how to run a complete wholesale analysis — ARV, rehab estimate, investor comps, and your Max Allowable Offer — from your phone, in the time it takes your seller to get you a glass of water.

Open Rehouzd on your phone and search the property address. The platform will validate the address, pull property details (beds, baths, square footage, year built), and kick off the analysis pipeline in the background.

While the data loads, you'll see progress events tick through in real time — comp scoring, ARV calculation, rehab estimation. The whole thing takes about 30-60 seconds on a good connection.

What to verify: Confirm the bed/bath/sqft numbers match what you're looking at. If the property has had unpermitted additions or renovations, the data might not match reality — adjust before running the numbers.

The first screen you land on is the Snapshot. This is your 30-second deal gut check:

• ARV — the after-repair value, pulled from recently sold comps in the area
• Estimated rehab cost — AI-generated based on condition, size, and local costs
• Tradeability score — a real-time signal showing whether your deal is priced to move at the current asking price

If the ARV looks off, you'll fix that in the next step. Don't get hung up on the Snapshot number yet — it's a starting point, not a verdict.

The tradeability slider on the Snapshot page is worth pausing on. Drag it to the seller's asking price and see how the score responds. If it goes red, you already know the seller's price is above what investors in the area will pay — that's your negotiation anchor before you even run the full numbers.

Tap Price Deal in the stepper at the top. This is where you do the actual underwriting.

You'll see a Numbers view with a clean waterfall:

ARV → tap to edit if the AI number doesn't match your read on the comps

Rehab Cost → tap to open the breakdown drawer. You'll see the AI estimate broken out by category — roofing, HVAC, kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, paint. Adjust any line item that doesn't match what you're seeing. If the roof clearly needs replacing and the estimate has it as light repair, update it.

Strategy toggle → Fix & Flip, Buy & Hold, or BRRRR. Most wholesale deals are priced for a flipper, so start with Fix & Flip unless you know your end buyer is a landlord.

Selling costs and margin → these default to market standards. For most deals you can leave them alone. If you're in a market with unusually high commissions or closing costs, adjust.

At the bottom, you'll see the MAO — Max Allowable Offer — displayed in a large green card. This is the number you take into your negotiation.

The math behind the MAO

For Fix & Flip:

You're working backwards from what the investor will pay to find the most you can pay the seller and still make your assignment fee. If the seller's ask is above the MAO, the deal doesn't work at that price — period.

Tap Map Comps in the sub-toggle. You'll see a map with the subject property and all recent comparable sales plotted around it.

Scroll below the map for the comp cards. Each card shows the address, sale price, beds/baths/sqft, and how far it is from your subject property.

What you're looking for:

• Are there 3+ comps within 0.5 miles that sold in the last 6 months?
• Are the bed/bath counts similar?
• Is the sale price spread tight (comps clustered near the ARV) or wide (one outlier is pulling the average up)?

If the comps are scattered or all over 0.75 miles away, the ARV is less certain — build more cushion into your MAO. If you have 5 comps within 0.3 miles in the last 90 days, you can be more confident in the number.

Tap any comp address to open it in a new tab. This lets you pull it up on Google Maps or verify the sale details without leaving Rehouzd.

Tap Find Buyers in the stepper. You'll see a ranked list of investors who've been buying in the area.

This step is often skipped during field analysis — don't skip it. Before you make an offer, confirm there are actual buyers in this market who purchase deals at your MAO price point. A deal that's mathematically viable but has no buyer base is still a deal that won't close.

Look for investors in the top two tiers (Most Likely Buyer and Strong Buyer). If there are 5-10 investors who've bought similar properties at your price point in the last 12 months, you have a market. If there are none, dig into why.

You now have:

• An ARV backed by nearby comps
• A rehab estimate you've spot-checked against what you saw
• A MAO that accounts for investor margin and your fee
• A buyer landscape that tells you if there's demand

If the seller's ask is at or below the MAO and there are buyers in the area, you have a deal worth pursuing. If the ask is above the MAO, you need a price reduction — and you now have the data to justify it.

The negotiation script: "Based on what investor buyers are paying in this area and the estimated repair costs, I can offer you up to [MAO]. That's what the numbers support at current market rates. If you need [seller's ask], the deal doesn't work for me."

That's not a guess or a feeling. It's the math, built from your comps and your rehab estimate, run in five minutes while you were standing in their driveway.

The mobile analysis isn't meant to replace a contractor walkthrough. It's meant to tell you whether a deal is worth a contractor walkthrough.

If the numbers work at the AI rehab estimate, the property goes to the next stage: site visit, contractor bid, offer. If the numbers don't work even under optimistic assumptions, you pass — and you do it in five minutes instead of two hours.

The wholesalers who move the most deals aren't better at analyzing individual properties. They're faster at screening the ones that don't work and focusing their time on the ones that do.

Run your first property analysis free on Rehouzd.