How We Calculate Your Offer: The Actual Math
By Ed Brancheau, Co-founder, SunnyNest Homes. Reviewed by the SunnyNest family team. Updated July 2026.
Every cash buyer in San Diego uses roughly the same offer formula. Almost none of them will show it to you. Here it is, with a worked example, because a seller who understands the deal makes a better decision, and we would rather earn business from informed sellers than uninformed ones.
What formula do cash home buyers actually use?
Nearly every professional buyer works from the same four numbers: the after-repair value (what the home sells for fixed up), minus repair costs, minus transaction and holding costs, minus the buyer's margin. Industry-wide, offers typically land between 60 and 85 percent of after-repair value depending on condition.
After-repair value, or ARV, comes from recent sales of comparable renovated homes near yours, the same way an appraiser works. Repair costs come from a line-item scope, not a guess. Transaction and holding costs cover escrow, title, insurance, taxes, and the months the project takes. The margin is our pay for taking the risk. None of this is secret. It is just rarely said out loud, and that silence is what makes sellers feel played. So here is the whole thing.
Why do you offer less than market value? The honest answer.
Because we buy the work, the risk, and the timeline you do not want. Research from UC San Diego found all-cash buyers pay around 10 percent less than mortgage-financed buyers on equivalent homes, and as-is investor purchases price in repairs on top. You are trading some price for speed, certainty, and zero repair burden.
The trade is only worth it when the trade is real. If your house is retail-ready and your calendar is open, list it with a Realtor, have a real estate attorney read the contract before you sign, and hold out for your price. We say that on our own website because it is true, and because the sellers we serve best are the ones for whom certainty genuinely beats maximum price: a report date, an auction date, an estate, a house that lenders will not finance.
Show me a worked example with real numbers.
Take a Clairemont house worth 850,000 dollars fixed up. Repairs run 90,000. Transaction and holding costs run about 45,000. Our margin is 65,000. The cash offer is 650,000, about 76 percent of ARV. Every offer we send breaks out these same four lines for your house.
The math in full: 850,000 ARV, minus 90,000 repairs (roof, kitchen, bath, systems, at renovation-volume pricing), minus 45,000 in costs (escrow and title twice, insurance, taxes, utilities, and financing for roughly a 5-month project), minus 65,000 margin, equals a 650,000 offer. If a competitor offers more, ask them for this same breakdown and see which number they fudged. Sometimes their higher offer is real and you should take it. A written breakdown is how you tell.
Do you buy the house yourself, or assign the contract?
Either one, and we tell you that before you sign. Sometimes we close on the house ourselves. Sometimes we assign the contract to an investor who closes in our place. Your price, your closing date and your terms stay exactly what the contract says, and you never pay our fee.
Assigning means we sign the purchase contract with you, then hand that contract to an investor on our list, and that investor closes on your house. The investor pays our fee, it is a set dollar amount, and it never comes out of your price. Ask us for the number and we will tell you. When we assign, the margin in the example above covers two people: the investor who does the repairs and the resale, and us. We work both paths at once, a loan for us and a call to our investors, because the cash any one investor has on hand changes week to week, and closing with whoever comes through first is how we keep the date we gave you. If you have heard that wholesalers shop a contract around and vanish, that is the version we built this company against.
Why do you make three offers instead of one?
Because the cash formula is not the only way to buy a house. A seller-financed or subject-to structure can pay you meaningfully more in total, because it removes our financing costs and spreads payment over time. Every property we can, we show a cash ballpark and up to two creative options next to it, and you pick one for the written offer.
The cash number is capped by the formula above. Creative structures change the formula: no hard-money interest, no double escrow, sometimes no repairs before resale. Those savings can flow to you as a higher total price, in exchange for time or terms. One seller takes the certain 650,000 today. Another takes 720,000 as seller financing with monthly income and a smaller tax bill. Same house. The right answer belongs to you, which is why you get the menu.
The worked example, as a picture
A Clairemont house worth $850,000 fixed up. The bar is the whole value. Three pieces come off. What is left is the offer.
Your cash offer: $650,000
76 percent of the fixed-up value
Repairs: $90,000
roof, kitchen, bath, systems, from a line-item scope
Costs: $45,000
escrow and title twice, insurance, taxes, about 5 months of holding
Our margin: $65,000
the pay for taking the risk
Your ballpark arrives with these same four lines filled in for your house. The video walkthrough firms up the repairs line, and the written offer uses the same four lines. Compare it against anyone.
Questions sellers ask us
Is the offer negotiable?
The inputs are. If you have a recent repair bid, comps we missed, or an appraisal, show us and we will rerun the math with your numbers. What we will not do is invent a higher ARV to win a signature and renegotiate it back during escrow. The industry calls that practice wholetailing a seller. We call it the reason we publish our math.
Do you lower offers after inspection?
Not for anything you told us or showed us. The first number is a ballpark from your answers, a 20-minute video walkthrough narrows it, and only then do we write the offer. After you sign, a problem nobody knew about comes out of our fee first. Past a limit written in your contract, the price moves only by the extra, you see the contractor's bid line by line and you can cancel for free. Surprise price drops 3 weeks into escrow are the tactic this company was built to compete against.
What percentage of market value do you pay?
As-is condition decides it. A house needing a full renovation prices around 70 to 76 percent of its after-repair value once real costs are counted. A lighter-touch house prices higher, and a creative-terms purchase can go higher still. The written breakdown shows your exact number and every input behind it.
Want the other side of the menu? See the creative structures that can beat the cash number.
A San Diego family answers, not a call center.
Ed gets back to you within one business day with a ballpark for every option, in dollars.
Cancel free within 3 business days of signing, 5 if you are 65 or older.
We pay you $100 when you sign, and you keep it even if you cancel.
Get your numbers, broken down like this
Tell us about the property. Ed gets back to you within one business day to set up a short call, and on it he walks you through a ballpark for every way we could buy it, in writing, in dollars. If we are close, a 20-minute video walkthrough firms it up before any offer. No pressure, no obligation, and we will tell you if listing with a Realtor is your better move.