Cash Offer Calculator
A cash offer sounds like one number, but it means three different calculations depending on where you stand. A buyer needs a defensible offer price built from market value, a negotiation discount and real costs. An investor needs a ceiling from after-repair value using the 70 percent rule. A seller needs net proceeds, side by side, for a cash sale, an agent listing and selling it themselves.
This calculator does all three in one card. Pick your tab, keep or change the pre-filled example, and you get the offer or the net with the arithmetic shown line by line.
The three tabs answer three different questions, so do not mix their inputs. Buyer mode prices an offer. Investor mode sets a ceiling. Seller mode compares what you keep. The pre-filled values are the worked examples used throughout this article.
Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- Price the offer from the right starting point: market value for a buyer, after-repair value for an investor, net proceeds for a seller. Mixing them is how people overpay or undersell.
- The 70 percent rule is a filter with an editable percentage, not a law. The margin it protects has to cover holding costs, two closings and profit.
- Sellers should compare nets, never headline prices. In the worked example the lowest headline route, selling it yourself at 95 percent of value, keeps the most money.
- Every figure in this article comes out of the calculator above with the pre-filled values, so you can reproduce each one before you change a single input.
- Quick Answer
- How to use the cash offer calculator, tab by tab
- The three formulas, and what each one leaves out
- Worked examples: one house, three answers
- Where the 70 percent rule helps, and where it misleads
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
How to use the cash offer calculator, tab by tab
Start on the tab that matches your seat at the table. Buyers enter market value from comparable sales, the discount they realistically need, and the cash costs sitting on top of the price, such as repairs the seller will not do, title and closing charges, and inspections. The result is a single offer figure plus the total discount against market value, so you can see what you are actually asking the seller to give up.
Investors enter after-repair value, the repair budget, any wholesale or assignment fee, and the investor percentage. Seventy is pre-filled because it is the classic rule, but the field is yours: the result names both your maximum allowable offer and the implied margin left in the deal. Sellers enter home value, mortgage balance, commission, closing percentage, listing repairs and the cash offer as a percentage of value. You get three nets, agent, cash and for-sale-by-owner, with the winner named. Nothing calculates until you press Calculate, and Reset restores the worked examples.
The three formulas, and what each one leaves out
Each tab is one short line of arithmetic. Knowing what each line leaves out matters as much as the line itself, because the omissions are where deals go wrong.
Buyer offer. Market value x (1 minus discount percent) minus additional costs. At $300,000, 15 percent and $8,000: $300,000 x 0.85 minus $8,000 = $247,000. What it leaves out: financing, because a cash buyer has none, and time, which is the seller benefit your discount is buying.
Investor maximum allowable offer. ARV x investor percent minus repairs minus fee. At $500,000, 70 percent, $30,000 and $0: $350,000 minus $30,000 = $320,000. What it leaves out: itemized holding and selling costs, which are compressed into the 30 percent you did not pay.
Seller agent net. Value minus commission, minus closing costs, minus listing repairs, minus mortgage. At $250,000 with 6 percent, 2 percent, $5,000 and $150,000 owed: $250,000 minus $15,000 minus $5,000 minus $5,000 minus $150,000 = $75,000.
Seller cash net. Value x cash percent minus mortgage, with no seller fees in this model: $250,000 x 80 percent minus $150,000 = $50,000. What it leaves out: months of holding costs you also avoid, which is the honest argument for taking less.
Seller FSBO net. The tool prices a self-sale at 95 percent of value, then subtracts costs of 1 percent of that price plus the same listing repairs plus a flat $1,500, then the mortgage: $237,500 minus $8,875 minus $150,000 = $78,625.
Worked examples: one house, three answers
The buyer and investor examples use different houses, because they answer different questions. The seller example is the one worth studying closely, since all three routes apply to the same $250,000 home with the same $150,000 mortgage.
| Seller route | Price basis | Costs taken off | Net after mortgage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent listing | $250,000 (full value) | $15,000 commission + $5,000 closing + $5,000 repairs | $75,000 |
| Cash sale at 80% | $200,000 | None in this model | $50,000 |
| Sell it yourself (FSBO) | $237,500 (95% of value) | $8,875 (1% + repairs + $1,500 flat) | $78,625 |
Read the gap, not just the winner. Cash trails the agent route by $25,000 on this house. That $25,000 is the price of closing in weeks with no showings, no repair negotiations and no fall-through risk. For a seller carrying two mortgages, facing a relocation deadline, or holding a house that needs work no retail buyer will finance, $25,000 can be cheap. For a seller with time and a presentable house, it is money left behind for no reason. If you are weighing a rental exit instead, the buying rental property calculator runs the full cash-flow side of holding rather than selling, and the buy-to-rent ratio calculator gives a quick rent-versus-price check on the same decision.
Where the 70 percent rule helps, and where it misleads
The rule survives because it is fast. Screening a list of properties at a showing or from a wholesaler email, one multiplication tells you whether a deal deserves a contractor walkthrough and a full cost workup. The 30 percent it holds back is a bundle: buying costs, holding costs for four to six months, selling commission and closing on the exit, and whatever profit makes the risk worth taking. On a typical flip, the true profit slice is often nearer 10 to 15 percent of ARV once those costs are paid.
It misleads when it is treated as underwriting. The rule knows nothing about your actual holding period, your cost of money, or whether the ARV came from renovated comparables or from optimism. Two inputs decide everything: ARV and repairs. Overstate ARV by $20,000 on the worked example and your ceiling rises by $14,000 you should never pay. Understate repairs by $15,000 and the same thing happens from the other side. Serious buyers therefore re-run the investor tab at 65 and 75 percent as a sensitivity check. A deal that only works at 80 percent is usually a deal to pass on. Investors comparing the hold alternative can sanity-check the exit with the cap rate calculator, and sellers who want the mirror image of the seller tab can use the buyers net out calculator to focus on proceeds at closing alone.
What competing calculators miss
The top-ranking tools for this keyword each serve exactly one seat at the table. The widely used maximum allowable offer guides and 70 percent rule calculators price the investor deal well, some with a helpful breakdown of where the 30 percent goes, but they offer a seller nothing and a retail buyer nothing. Cash-buyer company pages run the same formula from the other direction, as marketing, with the assumptions locked where they flatter the buyer.
Miss 1: one perspective only. A cash offer is a negotiation between at least two of these three calculations. A tool that shows only the investor ceiling hides the fact that the seller is running a net-proceeds comparison at the same time.
Miss 2: a fixed percentage treated as a law. Several tools hard-code 70 percent or bury the percentage in a slider with no explanation. Here the percentage is a plain editable field, and the result states the implied margin in dollars, so you can see what each point of flexibility costs: on a $500,000 ARV, one point is $5,000 of margin.
Miss 3: no third seller route. Seller comparisons elsewhere are cash versus agent, as static tables you cannot edit. This tool adds the for-sale-by-owner route with its own stated assumptions, 95 percent of value and lean costs, and lets you change every commission, closing and repair figure behind all three nets. If appraisal value is the argument in your deal, the appraisal cost calculator covers what establishing that value costs.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends which side of the table you sit on. A retail cash buyer typically offers 5 to 15 percent below market value to cover speed and certainty. An investor working the 70 percent rule targets about 30 percent below after-repair value before repairs, because that margin has to absorb holding costs, two rounds of closing costs and profit. Run both modes above with your own numbers instead of accepting the first percentage you are quoted.
It is an investor screening rule: maximum allowable offer equals 70 percent of after-repair value, minus repair costs, minus any wholesale or assignment fee. On a $500,000 ARV with $30,000 of repairs and no fee, the ceiling is $320,000. The 30 percent held back is not pure profit; it covers buying and selling costs, holding costs and the investor margin. Treat it as a first filter, not a final underwriting decision.
Compare net proceeds, not the headline price. In the seller example on this page, an 80 percent cash offer nets $50,000 after the mortgage, while listing with an agent nets $75,000 and selling it yourself nets $78,625. Cash can still be the right choice when you need a fast, certain close, cannot fund repairs, or face a deadline the listing timeline cannot meet. The numbers tell you exactly what that speed costs.
Because the seller mode prices FSBO at 95 percent of value with lean costs: 1 percent of the FSBO price, plus the same $5,000 of repairs and a flat $1,500. That avoids the 6 percent commission entirely. The trade-off is work and risk: pricing, marketing, showings, negotiation and paperwork all land on you, and a mispriced FSBO can sit unsold. The calculator shows the money; only you can price your time.
Start with the repairs needed to reach the value you are pricing against, then closing and title costs, inspection fees, and any assignment or wholesale fee if another party is involved. In buyer mode those go in the additional costs field. In investor mode, repairs and the fee have their own fields, and the investor percentage itself is where holding costs and profit live.
Yes. The investor percentage field is editable from just above 0 to 100, with 70 pre-filled. Competitive markets push disciplined buyers to 75 or even 80 percent on light cosmetic deals; heavy structural rehabs or expensive markets argue for 65 percent or lower. Every point you raise the percentage raises your maximum offer by 1 percent of ARV, which comes straight out of your margin.
Usually, yes, because there is no lender, no appraisal contingency tied to a loan, and no underwriting queue. A clean cash sale often closes in two to four weeks, against six to ten weeks for a listing that still has to find a financed buyer. That speed is exactly what the discount in a cash offer is paying for, which is why the seller comparison in this calculator weighs net proceeds against time instead of price alone.
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References
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “Owning a Home” guidance on comparing offers, closing costs and the homebuying process that sits behind any cash-versus-listing decision. CFPB: Owning a Home. Accessed October 2026.
- Freddie Mac, My Home buyer resources on offers, appraisals and closing, including how appraised value interacts with the price a buyer agrees to pay. Freddie Mac: My Home, Buying. Accessed October 2026.
- Internal Revenue Service, Publication 523, “Selling Your Home,” for the tax side of a sale once the net proceeds question is settled. IRS Publication 523: Selling Your Home. Accessed October 2026.