The 70% Rule, Reconsidered: Flip Math for York’s Real Margins

Every flipping course teaches the same formula: pay no more than 70% of the after-repair value, minus rehab costs. It's a fine thirty-second screen. It is not an underwrite, and treating it like one is how first flips lose money in York County.

What the 70% rule silently assumes

The 30% margin is supposed to cover selling costs, holding costs, financing, and profit. But those aren't constants — they're variables that swing hard with price point. On a $450,000 flip, 30% leaves generous room. On a $140,000 York City rowhome, the fixed costs — transfer tax, utilities through a winter hold, insurance on a vacant property, two closings — eat a far bigger share of a far smaller margin.

Where York deals actually differ

• Pennsylvania transfer tax is paid on both ends of a flip and is higher than most out-of-state formulas assume.
• Older housing stock — much of the county's value inventory predates 1950. Knob-and-tube, cast-iron stacks, and stone foundations don't care what your rehab-per-square-foot rule of thumb says.
• Price-band cliffs — an over-improved rowhome doesn't get its money back. ARV is capped by the block, not by the renovation budget.

What we run instead

Every deal we bring an investor gets a full cost stack: purchase, itemized rehab, month-by-month carry, realistic financing costs, both sets of closing costs, and the sale-side commission — solved for net profit and cash-on-cash return, not a percentage screen. If a deal only works at 70% and falls apart at 72%, it was never a deal; it was a coin flip.

We built internal tools that run this math in seconds, on every MLS listing and auction property in the county, every day. That's the deal flow our investors see.

Want this applied to your situation — with live numbers instead of frameworks?

Talk to the Team What's My Home Worth?