Marlowe Holdings
23 rental doors · 6 active flips · $8.9M portfolio
Marlowe Holdings owns 23 rental doors across single-family and small multifamily, and turns six to nine flips a year. Everything runs through one operating account and one spreadsheet. The rentals throw off steady cash but three of them are cash-flow negative after true capex reserves. The flips look profitable on the HUD but nobody has ever charged holding costs or the owner's own time against them.
The question on the table
Should I keep flipping, or roll the flip capital into more doors and buy back my calendar?
Company file
- Rental doors
- 23
- Active flips
- 6
- Portfolio value
- $8.9M
- Debt
- $5.6M
- Gross rents
- $34.8k/mo
- True net cash flow
- $6.1k/mo
What the system found
$6.1k → $11.4k
Monthly net cash flow after the reprice, refi, and three exits
$412k
Flip profit that was really unpaid owner labor and holding cost
19 hrs/week
Owner time returned by the turnover and screening system
3 doors
Sold — they never earned their capex reserve
Door-by-door truth, real flip margins after holding and labor, the capital allocation decision, and the tax path.
BK-OS · Run All Layers
Cut flips to three a year, buy four doors, price your own labor
Recommendation: reduce to three flips a year — only the two-bath cosmetic profile that has never missed its underwriting — and redeploy the freed capital into four small multifamily doors in the two submarkets where rent growth is outrunning taxes.
Charged properly, the flip business earned $412k less than reported over the trailing 24 months. Holding costs on the two heavy-rehab projects consumed the entire spread, and 780 hours of owner labor was never charged to anything.
The rentals are the opposite story: understated. Three doors are genuinely bad and should be sold, but the remaining twenty are producing a 9.1% cash-on-cash return that is being masked in the blended number by those three.
Reported flip profit (24 mo)
$688k
As shown on the HUDs
True flip profit
$276k
After holding costs and owner labor at $85/hr
Rental cash-on-cash (all 23)
6.4%
Rental cash-on-cash (best 20)
9.1%
Owner hours per flip
130
Owner hours per door per year
11
Comprehensive Financial Analysis
Every door, with the reserve actually charged
| Property | Rent | PITI | Reserve | Net | CoC | Call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kestrel Ave 4-plex | $5,400 | $3,020 | $540 | $1,190 | 13.8% | Hold |
| Bayard St duplex | $3,100 | $1,740 | $310 | $690 | 11.2% | Hold |
| Linden Row 6-unit | $7,650 | $4,480 | $765 | $1,410 | 10.4% | Hold |
| Ashcroft SFR ×5 | $8,750 | $5,390 | $875 | $1,190 | 8.6% | Hold |
| Pell Street duplex | $2,450 | $1,610 | $245 | $355 | 6.1% | Reprice |
| Verner Ct SFR ×2 | $3,200 | $2,290 | $320 | $190 | 3.2% | Reprice |
| Hollis Ave SFR | $1,250 | $1,180 | $125 | -$255 | — | Sell |
| Dunmore SFR | $1,340 | $1,290 | $134 | -$284 | — | Sell |
| Sabine St SFR | $1,660 | $1,540 | $166 | -$266 | — | Sell |
- HighThree doors have never covered their own reserve
Hollis, Dunmore, and Sabine were bought in 2021 at peak basis with 2021 insurance assumptions. Combined they drain $9.7k a year and carry $61k of deferred capex.
- HighEleven units are 8–14% below market rent
Long-tenured tenants who have never been renewed at market. A staged 5% escalation over two renewal cycles adds $2,180 a month without triggering turnover risk.
- MediumTwo loans are still on hard-money terms 19 months later
Refinancing both into 30-year conventional saves $1,940 a month and removes the only near-term maturity in the portfolio.
- LowNo entity separation between flips and rentals
One judgment on a flip currently reaches all 23 doors.
Scenario Simulator
Flip-by-flip, with holding cost and labor charged
| Project | Spread | Days held | Carry | Owner hrs | True profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wexford cosmetic | $71k | 94 | $14k | 88 | $49k |
| Ridgeline cosmetic | $64k | 101 | $15k | 92 | $41k |
| Calder two-bath | $88k | 112 | $19k | 104 | $60k |
| Talmadge full gut | $142k | 289 | $61k | 310 | $55k |
| Bellows addition | $118k | 334 | $74k | 286 | $20k |
| Cranbrook full gut | $96k | 301 | $66k | 298 | -$5k |
The pattern is unambiguous: cosmetic and two-bath projects under 120 days returned 58–69% of their spread as real profit. Every project over 250 days returned less than 20%, and one lost money once labor was charged.
Simulated forward: three cosmetic flips a year plus four additional doors produces $54k more annual profit than nine mixed flips, using 41% less of the owner's calendar.
Cash Flow Command
13-week cash with two rehabs running
Current pattern
Sell the three losing doors
+ refi the two hard-money loans
+ cap concurrent rehabs at two
Revenue Operating System
The turnover and screening system
Pre-turn scheduling at notice, not at move-out
Cuts average turn from 19 days to 8
Standardized finish package across all doors
One paint color, one flooring SKU, one fixture set
Renewal outreach at 120 days with a staged increase
Removes the awkward market-rate conversation
Screening criteria written down and applied identically
Fair-housing exposure disappears when the rule is the rule
Draw schedule and scope lock on every rehab
Change orders were the entire overrun on both gut projects
Average turn
19 → 8 days
Annual vacancy cost
$41k → $17k
Owner hours per week
46 → 27
Compliance & Risk
The tax and entity posture nobody set up
- HighFlips and rentals share one entity
Dealer classification risk contaminates the rental holdings and can disqualify 1031 treatment on the wrong sale.
- HighThree planned sales are candidates for a 1031 exchange
Identification is a 45-day clock. Selling first and planning after forfeits roughly $84k of deferral.
- MediumNo cost segregation study on the 6-unit or the 4-plex
Modeled first-year benefit of $61k in accelerated depreciation.
- LowInsurance certificates lapse on two contractors
An uninsured subcontractor injury on a flip currently reaches the rental equity.
"I thought the flips were paying for the rentals. It was the other way around the whole time — the rentals were funding my hobby."
What would this look like for your business?
Marlowe Holdings is illustrative. The tools are not. Point them at your own numbers and you will have the first version of this file inside an afternoon.