Quick Answer
ARV (After Repair Value) is the estimated market value of a property after all planned renovations are completed. Calculated using comparable recent sales, ARV is the foundational metric for house flippers and wholesalers to determine their maximum allowable offer and expected profit.
What is After Repair Value?
After Repair Value (ARV) is the projected market value of a property once all planned renovations and repairs have been completed. It is determined by analyzing recent sales of comparable properties — homes with similar size, condition, location, and features — after they were renovated or are already in retail-ready condition. Real estate investors use ARV as the anchor for every downstream calculation: it sets the ceiling on how much they can pay (MAO), how much profit to expect, and whether a deal is viable at all. ARV is calculated by pulling sold comps within the same ZIP code, sold within the last 6 months, with similar square footage (±25%), and deriving a median price-per-square-foot, then multiplying that PSF by the subject property's square footage. Because ARV is an estimate based on market data, accuracy depends on comp quality — stale, dissimilar, or geographically scattered comps will produce unreliable ARV figures. DealBeast automates this calculation using a 10-step comp selection pipeline to deliver institutional-quality ARV estimates in seconds.
Real Deal: Memphis Rancher — $31K Wholesale Profit
Memphis, TN (ZIP 38116) — Anonymized investor account
A wholesaler spotted a 3-bed/1-bath, 1,080 sqft brick rancher listed "as-is" at $79,000 in South Memphis. The property had a cracked foundation wall, dated kitchen, and deferred roof maintenance estimated at $22,000 to repair. To set a defensible ARV, the investor pulled four comparable sales within the same ZIP code that had sold within 90 days: a renovated 3/1 at 1,020 sqft closed at $118,000, a 3/2 at 1,150 sqft closed at $129,500, a 3/1 at 1,080 sqft closed at $122,000, and a 3/2 at 1,200 sqft closed at $135,000. Stripping the outlier 3/2 properties and normalizing to price per square foot on the two closest comps produced a median PSF of $111 (($109.26 + $112.96) / 2). ARV = $111 × 1,080 = $119,880, rounded conservatively to $118,000. With a $22,000 rehab estimate, the MAO came to ($118,000 × 0.70) − $22,000 = $60,600. The investor contracted the property at $58,500 — below even the MAO — and assigned it to a local flipper for $89,500, pocketing a $31,000 assignment fee.
Takeaway
Getting ARV right is what made this deal possible. Had the wholesaler used the seller's asking price as a value anchor instead of pulling real comps, the numbers would have looked distorted. The discipline of running actual PSF analysis — and discarding the dissimilar 3/2 comps — produced a defensible ARV that both the wholesaler and the end buyer could underwrite.
