The Shouldirefi Deal Analyzer is a free tool for running the numbers on a real estate deal before you commit money to it. Instead of wrestling with a spreadsheet, you pick a strategy, enter the deal's basic figures, and get estimated headline metrics in seconds — then tweak assumptions and watch the results update.
Here is how to get from a blank form to a decision-ready analysis.
Step 1: Pick a Strategy
Start by choosing how you plan to make money on the property. The analyzer supports seven strategies:
- Buy & Hold — a standard long-term rental
- BRRRR — buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat
- Fix & Flip — renovate and resell
- House Hack — live in one unit, rent the others
- Wholesale — assign the contract to an end buyer
- STR — a short-term (nightly) rental
- Commercial — multifamily underwritten on income
The inputs and outputs change to fit the strategy: a flip asks about ARV and rehab costs, an STR asks about nightly rate and occupancy, a commercial deal asks about the rent roll and expenses. If you are torn between two plans for the same property, run it under both strategies and compare.
Step 2: Enter the Deal Numbers
Fill in the figures for your deal: purchase price, down payment and financing terms, rehab budget if applicable, income (rent, nightly rate, or rent roll), and operating expenses. Two habits make your results far more trustworthy:
- Use real numbers where you have them. Actual tax bills, insurance quotes, and rent comps beat guesses.
- Be conservative where you do not. Round income down and expenses up. A deal that only works with perfect assumptions is not a deal.
You do not need every field perfect on the first pass — start rough, see where the deal stands, then refine the inputs that move the result most.
Step 3: Read the Headline Metrics
The analyzer surfaces the metrics that matter for your chosen strategy — things like monthly cash flow, cash-on-cash return, cap rate, IRR and equity multiple, effective housing cost for a house hack, or the end buyer's spread on a wholesale. These are estimates built entirely from your inputs, so treat them as a structured way to think, not a verdict. The most useful move is changing one assumption at a time — vacancy, rate, rehab budget — and watching which metrics are sensitive to it. That tells you where the risk in the deal actually lives.
Step 4: Save Your Deals
When an analysis is worth keeping, save it. Saving requires a free account, and it is worth creating one for a single reason: a saved deal stores every strategy's inputs and headline numbers, not just the tab you were looking at. Load a saved deal later and the entire analysis comes back — the Buy & Hold numbers, the flip scenario, the STR assumptions, all of it — exactly as you left it.
That makes saved deals a working pipeline, not a screenshot. You can compare several candidate properties side by side, update a deal when a seller counters, or revisit the same address months later without re-entering anything.
A Sensible Workflow
A pattern that works well: run a rough pass on every property that catches your eye, save the ones that survive, then refine the two or three best with real quotes and comps before making offers. Ten minutes in the Deal Analyzer filters out most bad deals before they cost you an inspection fee — and the good ones arrive at the negotiating table with their numbers already stress-tested.
All figures are estimates for informational purposes only — not financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions.