HOW REHABFOUNDRY WORKS

A quick-start guide to tracking your deals, understanding your numbers, and making smarter decisions.

THE BIG PICTURE

RehabFoundry is built for real estate investors who are actively rehabbing or holding properties. It helps you answer three questions every deal demands:

▸Where is my money going — and am I staying on budget?
▸How much is this property costing me every single day I own it?
▸Should I flip this or hold it as a rental?

Every feature flows from those three questions. The sooner you get your numbers in, the more useful it becomes.

ADDING A PROPERTY

Start by going to Properties → New Property. Fill in what you know — you can always come back and edit.

Purchase Price

What you paid (or plan to pay) at closing.

ARV (After Repair Value)

Your best estimate of what the property will be worth after renovations. Pull comps from Zillow or your agent. This is your profit ceiling — get it right.

Strategy

Flip if you plan to sell. Hold if you plan to rent. You can change this later.

Purchase Date

The day you closed. This starts the Carrying Cost Clock.

Target Sell Date

Optional. Useful for tracking how close you are to your exit.

TRACKING EXPENSES & BUDGETS

Every dollar you spend on a property should be logged as an expense. Expenses are organized into eight categories: Carrying Costs, Exit Costs, Hidden / Gotcha Costs, Permits & Inspections, Purchase & Acquisition, Renovation, Rental Prep, and Soft Costs.

Budgets are optional but powerful. Set a budget per category and the app tracks how much you've used. You'll get a warning when you're approaching the limit (80%) and a confirmation prompt if you try to go over. The Budget vs Actual bars on the property page give you an instant visual on where you stand.

Tips

▸Log expenses as you go — not at the end of the project. Memory is expensive.

▸Use the Receipt Photo field to snap a photo of every receipt. The app will try to autofill the vendor, amount, date, and description automatically using AI.

▸Use Notes for anything that's not captured in the other fields — invoice numbers, contractor info, warranty details.

THE CARRYING COST CLOCK

Every property costs money to own even when nobody's working on it. Mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, utilities — these run whether the crew shows up or not. The Carrying Cost Clock makes that visible in real time.

Set your monthly costs under Configure Costs on the property page. The clock starts from your purchase date and ticks up every second. A slow renovation or a permit delay that adds two months can easily cost $4,000–$8,000 — the clock makes that visceral.

Color coding

Orange— Under 3 months of carrying costs accumulated. On track.

Yellow— 3–6 months. Starting to eat into margin. Move faster.

Red— Over 6 months. Carrying costs are a serious problem.

RECEIPT OCR — AUTOFILL FROM A PHOTO

When adding an expense, tap Receipt Photo and take a picture of your receipt. The app sends it to an AI vision model which reads the receipt and automatically fills in the vendor, amount, date, and description. Review the fields before saving — you can edit anything it got wrong.

How it handles conflicts

If you've already typed something into a field before selecting the photo, the app won't overwrite it silently. Instead it shows a gold suggestion bar beneath that field with what the receipt found. Tap Use to accept it or Dismiss to keep what you typed.

FLIP VS HOLD CALCULATOR

The Calculator lets you model both exit strategies side by side and see which makes more financial sense for a specific deal. If you open it from a property page (Run Calculator), it pre-fills with that property's actual numbers.

Flip Scenario

Models a buy-renovate-sell deal. Enter your purchase price, renovation costs, expected sale price (ARV), realtor commission, closing costs, and how long you plan to hold. The key output is Annualized ROI — your return scaled to a yearly rate so you can compare it fairly to other investments.

Hold / Rental Scenario

Models keeping the property as a rental. Enter expected monthly rent, vacancy rate, management fee, and monthly expenses. Key outputs are Cash-on-Cash return (how hard your money is working) and Cap Rate (the property's yield independent of how you financed it).

5-Year Projection

Compares the one-time flip profit against 5 years of rental cash flow plus equity appreciation. If the hold total beats the flip, long-term ownership is likely the better play.

Tap the ⓘ icon next to any field or result for a plain-English explanation of what it means, how it's calculated, and why it matters.

RENTAL INCOME (HOLD STRATEGY)

If your property's strategy is set to Hold, a Rental Income section appears at the bottom of the property page. This has two parts:

Lease

Store your tenant's lease details — name, monthly rent, security deposit, start and end dates. You can have multiple leases over time as tenants turn over.

Rent Payments

Log each payment as you receive it. Record the amount, date, and which month it covers. This lets you see at a glance whether rent is coming in on time and track your actual cash flow vs the projections in the calculator.

KEY TERMS

ARV — After Repair Value

What the property should be worth after all renovations are complete, based on comparable sales nearby. This is the number your entire profit depends on — if it's wrong, everything downstream is wrong.

ROI — Return on Investment

Net profit divided by total money invested, expressed as a percentage. Tells you if you made money, but says nothing about how fast.

Annualized ROI

ROI scaled to a full year. A 10% ROI in 3 months is ~40% annualized. Use this to compare flips of different lengths, and to benchmark against the stock market (~10% annual average).

NOI — Net Operating Income

Annual rental income minus all operating expenses, before any mortgage payment. The baseline number used to value rental properties and compare them.

Cap Rate

NOI divided by purchase price. Measures a property's return assuming you paid all cash — useful for comparing properties regardless of financing. 5–8% is typical for residential.

Cash-on-Cash Return

Annual cash flow divided by total cash invested. Unlike cap rate, this accounts for your financing. 8–12% is a solid target. It tells you how hard your actual down payment is working.

Carrying Costs

All costs of owning a property while you're not yet generating income from it — mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, HOA. These run every day and are the biggest silent killer of flip margins.

Vacancy Rate

The percentage of the year your rental sits empty. 8% (~1 month/year) is a standard conservative estimate. Even great landlords deal with vacancy between tenants.

Questions or feedback? The app is actively being built — things will keep improving.