A cosmetic rehab should price out around $20 to $40 a square foot in 2026. A moderate rehab with a new kitchen and updated baths runs $40 to $75. A full gut with investor-grade finishes lands between $90 and $135, and ground-up construction costs about $162 a square foot before land, per the NAHB's 2024 construction cost survey. Those are the going rates. The tool below answers the sharper question: you're holding a contractor's bid, and you want to know whether the number is fair. Enter the square footage, pick the scope, type the bid. No signup, no email.
Rehab Cost Checker
Ranges updated August 2026The 2026 cost per square foot, by scope
| Scope | Range ($/sq ft) | Typical | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cosmetic / light | $20–$40 | $25–$35 | Paint, flooring, fixtures, light kitchen and bath refresh |
| Moderate | $40–$75 | $50–$65 | Kitchen remodel, updated baths, new windows, partial systems work |
| Full gut | $60–$160 | $90–$135 | Down to studs, all new systems, layout changes; retail-grade guts run $150–$200+ |
| New construction | $140–$190 | $153–$166 | Ground-up build, construction cost only, land excluded |
The new construction number is the best documented in residential real estate. The NAHB Cost of Constructing a Home survey puts average builder construction cost at $162 per square foot for homes built in 2024, the latest edition as of this writing. The Census Bureau's Survey of Construction lands in the same place for 2024 starts: a median of $153 for spec homes and $166 for custom builds, both excluding land. Those two sources use different methods and arrive within 8% of each other, which is about as much agreement as construction data ever produces.
The rehab tiers deserve an honest caveat: no government survey tracks renovation cost per square foot. The ranges above are the 2026 rules of thumb published by investor cost guides, and they hold up under two independent checks. First, the NAHB survey's own stage costs: major systems rough-ins plus interior finishes on a 2024 build total about $70 per square foot at builder cost, and those are precisely the stages a gut rehab replicates before demo, roof work, and contractor margin push it higher. Second, our own funded budgets, below. Estimator databases like RSMeans price this work line by line, but their figures sit behind a license, which is why nobody quotes them in a blog post.
What 1,298 funded rehab budgets look like
We've funded over 2,500 real estate investment deals, and the construction side of that book gives us something the cost guides don't have: contractor budgets that were underwritten, funded, and then drawn against dollar by dollar. Across 1,298 funded single-property bridge loans with reliable square footage, most of them Maryland fix-and-flip projects, the median rehab budget is $42 per square foot. The middle half of the book runs $27 to $62. The median total budget is $60,000, which works out to roughly 40% of the purchase price on the typical deal.
| Budget size | Loans | Median $/sq ft | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $30K | 189 | $16 | $11–$20 |
| $30K–$75K | 589 | $35 | $28–$46 |
| $75K–$150K | 437 | $64 | $52–$82 |
| $150K+ | 83 | $87 | $65–$120 |
Read the table against the industry tiers and two things stand out. The small-budget rows corroborate the published cosmetic and moderate ranges almost exactly. And our heaviest projects run cheaper per foot than the published gut range, because this is investor work: durable mid-grade finishes, competitive sub pricing, and Baltimore-area labor rather than coastal-metro rates. If your gut bid comes in at $95 a foot with retail finishes in an expensive market, that can be fair. At $95 a foot for a rowhouse flip with LVP and stock cabinets, ask more questions.
What the line items should look like
Every bridge loan we fund with a construction reserve comes with a line-item schedule of values, and we release draw money against those lines. The medians below come from the budgets on our funded loans, most of them Baltimore-area single-family and small multifamily projects. Use them to sanity-check the individual lines on your bid, not just the total.
| Line item | Median budget | 75th percentile | Budgets with the line |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC (rough-in) | $5,000 | $7,500 | 994 |
| Framing | $4,500 | $10,000 | 1,063 |
| Flooring (hardwood / vinyl) | $4,500 | $6,000 | 1,500 |
| Drywall | $4,500 | $7,900 | 1,292 |
| Roofing / gutters | $4,000 | $6,500 | 887 |
| Electrical (rough-in) | $4,000 | $6,500 | 1,126 |
| Plumbing (rough-in) | $4,000 | $6,450 | 1,155 |
| Painting | $4,000 | $5,000 | 1,564 |
| Kitchen cabinets | $3,500 | $5,000 | 1,473 |
| HVAC (final) | $3,500 | $4,750 | 997 |
| Windows | $3,000 | $4,500 | 1,034 |
| Bathroom tile | $3,000 | $4,000 | 1,182 |
| Demolition / dumpster | $3,000 | $5,000 | 1,303 |
| Appliances | $3,000 | $4,000 | 1,366 |
| Kitchen countertops | $2,000 | $3,000 | 1,324 |
| Electrical (final) | $2,000 | $3,000 | 1,217 |
| Plumbing (final) | $2,000 | $3,000 | 1,121 |
Source: line-item construction budgets on Pimlico Capital funded bridge loans, as of August 2026. Medians are per budget line on the loans that carry that line. Mostly Maryland projects at investor-grade finish levels; your market and finish level will move these.
How rehab budgets actually perform
This is the part no cost guide can tell you, because it takes a loan book to see it. Across 1,357 completed rehab projects we financed and tracked draw by draw:
- 76% drew their construction budget down to the last dollar. Another 8% drew at least 90% of it. A rehab budget behaves like a floor, not a ceiling: whatever the schedule says, the project finds a way to spend it. Budget accordingly.
- Roughly 1 in 4 draw requests gets funded below the amount requested, because the inspection finds less work complete than the request claims. Among cut draws, the median cut is about a quarter of the request. The cut rate is roughly flat through the first five draws and highest from the sixth draw on, which is where tired budgets meet unfinished punch lists.
- 23% of completed projects took longer than 12 months from funding to payoff, against a median of about 8 months. Every extra month is carry cost your budget never listed.
Source: draw requests and payoff records on Pimlico Capital funded bridge loans with construction budgets, completed loans only, as of August 2026 (1,357 loans; 6,800+ funded draws).
What drives cost at your scope
Cosmetic: finish selections are almost the whole number. The spread between builder-grade LVP and site-finished hardwood, or between refacing cabinets and replacing them, is the difference between $20 and $40 a foot. Nothing behind the walls should be in this bid; if it is, the scope is mislabeled.
Moderate: the kitchen and the bath count set the price. For national context, the 2025 Cost vs. Value Report puts a midrange minor kitchen remodel at $28,458 and a midrange bath remodel at $26,138 as standalone retail projects; investor pricing runs well under that, but the ratio holds. Two baths instead of one moves a moderate rehab more than any flooring decision will.
Full gut: systems and surprises. Rough-in trades (electrical, plumbing, HVAC) plus drywall and framing are the budget's center of gravity, and they're also where hidden conditions live. This is the scope where the 15% contingency isn't optional. A roof replacement alone runs $31,871 at retail national average per the same report; investor roof lines in our book budget far less, which is exactly the kind of gap to ask your contractor about, line by line.
New construction: the structure itself is well-benchmarked, so the variance moves to what the surveys exclude: site work, utility connections, permits, and financing time. When a ground-up bid beats $140 a foot by a wide margin, the missing money is usually in one of those four places.
Retail project figures: 2025 Cost vs. Value Report national averages (2024 data), © 2025 Zonda Media, a Delaware corporation. Complete data from the Cost vs. Value Report can be downloaded free at www.costvsvalue.com.
The low bid is the one that should scare you
Everyone checks a bid for padding. Almost nobody checks it for missing money, and missing money is the failure mode that actually kills projects. A rehab doesn't die because you paid $6 a foot too much; it dies mid-project, when the budget is spent, the work is 70% done, and the contractor who priced the job below cost stops answering the phone. We watch this happen from the draw side of the table, which is why our underwriters treat a bid far below the going range as a risk flag, not a discount. The numbers above are the proof: budgets get spent to the last dollar far more often than they come in under, and a quarter of draw requests get cut at inspection.
If your bid lands below the range in the checker, don't celebrate yet. Walk the scope with the contractor line by line and find out what isn't in it. Permits, dumpsters, and appliances are the classic omissions. So is the second bathroom.
Does your market change the number?
Less than you'd expect, at least in our footprint. The last publicly published RSMeans City Cost Index (2021) put Baltimore at 94 against a national base of 100, Washington at 95.5, and Richmond at 89, with Philadelphia above national on union labor. The 2024 Cost vs. Value data tells a flatter story, with Baltimore renovation project costs sitting within a point of the national average. The sources disagree on direction and agree on magnitude: outside northern New Jersey and New York, the Mid-Atlantic runs within about 6% of national. That's why the checker doesn't ask for your metro. Picking the right scope and finish level moves the number by multiples; geography moves it by single-digit percentages.
How to pressure-test the bid before you sign
- Demand a line-item schedule of values, not a lump sum. It's what we fund draws against, and it's the only format you can actually argue with. A contractor who won't break out the number is telling you something.
- Check the math in both directions. The total divided by square footage should land in the range above, and the line items should sum to the total. Bids fail one of those tests more often than you'd think.
- Compare the big lines to real budgets. The line-item table above has the medians we see for framing, systems, kitchens, and roofs across funded projects.
- Add 10 to 15 percent contingency on top. Lean high on older housing stock, where the expensive surprises live behind plaster. Our guide to building a rehab budget covers where that contingency actually goes.
- Ask how the draw schedule will work before work starts. Payment tied to completed, inspected work protects both sides. Here's how our draw process runs, if you want the lender's-eye view.
And remember the bid is only one line of the project's real cost. Purchase, carry, financing, and resale costs sit on top of it, which is a different calculation we've written up separately.
Holding a bid and a deal?
Our bridge loans fund the purchase and the rehab budget, released in draws as the work gets done. Get a rate in under a minute, no credit pull.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to rehab a house per square foot in 2026?
Cosmetic work runs about $20 to $40 per square foot, a moderate rehab with a new kitchen and baths $40 to $75, and a full gut $90 to $135 with investor-grade finishes. Ground-up new construction runs about $162 per square foot before land, per the NAHB 2024 construction cost survey. Where a project lands inside its band is mostly finish level and how much systems work it needs.
What counts as a full gut rehab?
Down to the studs: new electrical, plumbing, and HVAC throughout, new drywall and insulation, usually a new roof, and often a reconfigured layout. If the systems stay and the walls stay, it's a moderate rehab even when every finish changes.
Is a low contractor bid a red flag?
Usually, yes. A bid well under the going range tends to mean the contractor missed scope, priced materials the finished product won't actually use, or plans to make it up in change orders. Underpriced rehabs are how projects stall mid-draw when the money runs out before the work does. Treat a low bid as a question to answer, not savings to bank.
How much contingency should a rehab budget carry?
Plan on 10 to 15 percent on top of the bid, and lean toward the high end on older housing stock where surprises live behind the walls. A budget with no contingency is a budget that fails the first time a subfloor comes up soft.