The Deal at a Glance
No composite averages here — this is one specific deal, with the numbers as they actually landed. It's a condo, which matters more than it might seem — more on that below.
| Line Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Property type | Condo, Broward County, FL |
| Purchase price | $39,000 |
| Rehab budget | $37,000 |
| Total cash into purchase + rehab | $76,000 |
| ARV (After Repair Value, as underwritten) | $92,000 |
| Actual sale price | $92,000 |
| Timeline, purchase to sale | 2 months |
On paper, that's a $16,000 spread ($92,000 sale minus $76,000 into the deal) in roughly eight weeks. That number is real. It's also not the whole story — and this deal is a good example of why.
Why the ARV Matching the Sale Price Exactly Is the Real Headline
Most investors get the ARV number wrong going in, in one direction or the other — padded to make a marginal deal pencil, or lowballed out of caution and used to walk away from a deal that would have worked. On this one, the ARV used at underwriting and the price it actually sold for landed on the same number: $92,000. That's the part worth paying attention to more than the raw dollar spread — it means the comp selection at the front end held up against what the market actually paid two months later, not just what a spreadsheet assumed it would.
The Gross Spread Is the Wrong Number to Stop At
$16,000 on a $76,000 investment in two months looks great as a headline. It's also, by itself, an incomplete answer — because a gross spread and a net profit are two different numbers, and the gap between them matters more on a deal this size than it would on a $300,000 flip. None of the following costs are subtracted from that $16,000 yet:
- Real estate commission — a typical 5–6% listing commission on a $92,000 sale runs roughly $4,600–$5,520 if the property sold on the open market through an agent.
- Closing costs, both sides — title insurance, Florida's documentary stamp tax (about 0.70% of the sale price, roughly $644 on this deal), recording fees, and any buyer-side concessions negotiated at the table.
- Holding costs for the two months of ownership — on a condo, this is mostly monthly HOA dues rather than a full homeowner's policy, plus a smaller HO-6 walls-in policy for the unit itself, prorated property taxes, and utilities during the rehab. Combined, that's commonly $650–$1,200+ a month in Broward County depending on the building, with HOA dues usually the single biggest piece of it.
- Financing costs, if the deal was leveraged — a cash purchase skips this line entirely. A hard money loan on a deal this size typically carries 1.5–3% in points plus two months of interest at 2026's prevailing 10.5%–11.5% rates, which can add several thousand dollars.
Layer in even the conservative end of those ranges — commission, closing costs, and two months of holding costs — and a $16,000 gross spread can realistically come down to a net profit somewhere in the $5,000–$8,000 range before financing costs are counted at all. If the purchase and rehab were financed rather than paid in cash, financing costs alone can compress that further. (These are typical Broward County condo ranges, not this specific deal's actual closing statement — see our Hard Money Lenders guide for the real 2026 rate data behind that estimate.)
What Buying a Condo Adds to the Numbers
A condo flip carries a cost structure a single-family flip doesn't. The HOA fee isn't optional overhead — it's usually covering the building's master insurance policy, exterior maintenance, and reserve contributions, which is why it tends to be the largest line item in holding costs rather than a minor one. It also means the rehab scope itself is narrower: you're renovating the unit's interior, not the roof, exterior, or structure, which is part of why a $37,000 rehab budget went as far as it did here.
The other side of that coin is building-level risk that a unit-only walkthrough won't show you. Florida's post-2022 condo reserve funding and structural inspection requirements have pushed HOA dues higher across many buildings, and older or under-reserved associations carry real exposure to a special assessment that can land on whoever owns the unit when it's billed — potentially the buyer you sell to, or you, if the timing runs long. Checking the association's reserve study and recent board minutes before closing is exactly the kind of building-level diligence that matters as much as the unit's finishes on a condo flip.
What a Deal This Size Actually Teaches
At a $39,000 purchase price, the total cost stack — rehab, commission, closing costs, holding costs, and financing if used — can end up being a larger share of the deal than the purchase price itself. Every one of those line items matters proportionally more here than it would on a $250,000 flip, because there's less room in the spread to absorb a miss on any single one of them. Two months is also a fast, tight timeline — achievable when the rehab scope is estimated accurately going in and nothing on the permit or inspection side stalls the schedule, but it doesn't leave much room for a mid-project surprise either.
"A $16,000 spread on paper can turn into a genuinely great deal or a marginal one, and the difference usually comes down to how the deal was financed and how tightly the two months in between were run — not the purchase price or the ARV. Those are exactly the numbers a headline spread doesn't show you, which is why we don't stop at purchase-plus-rehab-versus-ARV when we look at a deal, and why our full report shows the waterfall instead of just the top-line number."
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