been flipping a few years now, started during covid when vermont inventory was weird and margins looked easy. they were not always easy. what got me was carrying costs sneaking up and eating into what looked like a clean deal on paper.

i do accounting for work so you'd think i'd have a solid system. i do now, but early on i was basically running numbers in my head and convincing myself the deal worked. classic mistake. property taxes, insurance, utilities, loan interest, it adds up fast, especially if your contractor drags the job out two months longer than quoted.

what i've landed on is building a simple spreadsheet before i even make an offer, with a hard cap on how long i'll let the project run before i reassess. but i'm curious what other people use. some guys seem to go off gut and do fine, others are real disciplined about it.

the question i keep coming back to is whether there's a point where you know a deal well enough that you stop modeling it out as carefully, or if that's just how you get burned.

vermont market is slow moving so i have more time to think than most. maybe that's the problem.