How much does it cost to rehab a house per square foot?

A cosmetic refresh runs about $25 to $45 a foot. A heavy rehab with systems work runs $45 to $80. A full gut runs $80 to $130. Above roughly $130 you are building rather than renovating, and the pricing behaves like new construction.

How much contingency should a rehab budget carry?

Ten to fifteen percent on a property you have walked and opened. More on one you have not. Contingency is not padding, it is the budget line for what is behind the walls, which nobody can see before demolition.

Why is my rehab estimate always low?

Because estimates are built from what is visible. Structural work, unpermitted additions, failed sewer laterals and knob and tube wiring do not appear in a walkthrough. Scope from a list rather than a feeling, then add contingency.

Should I use cost per square foot or a line item budget?

Build the line item budget, then check it against the per foot rate. The total is almost impossible to sanity check on its own. The rate can be held against what that level of work costs, which catches an error before a contractor does.

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What a rehab actually costs per square foot

Rehab is the number investors get wrong most. Here is what each level of work costs per foot, and why the rate is easier to check than the total.

August 15, 2026 · 3 min read

Ask ten investors what a rehab costs and you get ten numbers, most of them picked because they sounded about right. Then the walls come open.

Rehab is the input that decides everything downstream. It sets your maximum offer, the loan, the interest you pay while you hold, and whatever profit survives. An error here does not stay here.

The bands

These are ranges, not quotes, and they move with your market and your labour. Use them to check a number rather than to produce one.

$25 to $45 a foot. Cosmetic. Paint, flooring, fixtures, light landscaping, maybe a kitchen refresh that keeps the cabinet boxes. Nothing behind the walls. This is a house that is dated rather than damaged.

$45 to $80 a foot. Heavy rehab. Everything above, plus a real kitchen, real bathrooms, and one or two systems: a roof, an HVAC replacement, some electrical. This is the most common flip band in most of the country.

$80 to $130 a foot. Full gut. Down to studs. New systems throughout, new layout, sometimes structural. Long timelines and a high chance of surprises.

Above $130 a foot. You are building, not renovating. Price it the way you would price ground-up construction, because the schedule, the draws and the risks all behave that way.

Why the rate matters more than the total

A budget of $84,000 tells you almost nothing. Is that high? Low? For what house?

$60 a foot tells you a great deal. It says heavy rehab. So if your scope is paint and flooring, your number is wrong by a factor of two, and you will find out at the worst possible moment.

This is the single cheapest error check in the whole process. Compute the rate. If the rate and the scope disagree, one of them is lying.

Building the number from scope

Work through the property with a list rather than an impression.

Priced by area:

Interior paint, roughly $3 a foot of finished space
Flooring, roughly $6 to $7 a foot for mid-grade vinyl plank installed
Rewiring, roughly $5 to $8 a foot
Repiping, roughly $4 to $10 a foot
Roof, roughly $6 a foot of roof area, which is not the same as floor area

Priced by unit:

Kitchen, full gut and replace: $15,000 to $25,000
Bathroom, full gut and replace: $8,000 to $12,000 each
Windows: $600 to $900 each installed
HVAC system: $8,000 to $12,000

Then add what nobody budgets:

Permits, dumpsters and temporary utilities, roughly 8% of the hard costs
Contingency, 10% to 15%

The rehab budget builder runs exactly this and returns the per foot rate alongside the total, so the sanity check happens automatically.

The four things that blow a budget

1. Scoping from the walkthrough. You are pricing what you can see. The expensive problems are behind drywall, under the slab, or in the panel.

2. No contingency. A budget with nothing held back is a forecast, not a budget. Ten percent minimum on a property you have opened up.

3. Treating the contractor's number as the budget. It is a bid on the scope you described. Every change order after that is yours.

4. Forgetting the holding costs run the whole time. A rehab that takes two extra months costs you two extra months of interest, taxes and insurance. That belongs in the deal, not in the rehab line, and the flip calculator charges it separately for exactly that reason.

What to do with the number

Once you have a defensible rehab figure, everything else follows from it. The 70% screen subtracts it. The loan finances it, in draws against completed work rather than as a lump at closing. The interest accrues on it only as it is drawn.

Which means an honest rehab number makes every other number honest, and an optimistic one quietly corrupts all of them.

Run it, then send the deal over. Written terms inside 24 to 48 hours.

Common questions

How much does it cost to rehab a house per square foot?: A cosmetic refresh runs about $25 to $45 a foot. A heavy rehab with systems work runs $45 to $80. A full gut runs $80 to $130. Above roughly $130 you are building rather than renovating, and the pricing behaves like new construction.
How much contingency should a rehab budget carry?: Ten to fifteen percent on a property you have walked and opened. More on one you have not. Contingency is not padding, it is the budget line for what is behind the walls, which nobody can see before demolition.
Why is my rehab estimate always low?: Because estimates are built from what is visible. Structural work, unpermitted additions, failed sewer laterals and knob and tube wiring do not appear in a walkthrough. Scope from a list rather than a feeling, then add contingency.
Should I use cost per square foot or a line item budget?: Build the line item budget, then check it against the per foot rate. The total is almost impossible to sanity check on its own. The rate can be held against what that level of work costs, which catches an error before a contractor does.

Have a deal like this

Run your numbers.

The calculators charge the costs this piece describes: points, interest over the hold, closing on both sides, carry, and the cost to sell. It takes about a minute.

Run your numbers Submit a deal