Carrying Costs

In real estate terms, a carrying cost is the cost associated with the expenses that you invest in a property after purchasing it, and before it can be resold.

These expenses may include property taxes, mortgage insurance, hazard insurance, utility, supply, and upkeep expenses, like grass cutting, window washing, and picking up the crap from the dog whose owner lives next door. You get the picture.

Here’s an example: After dropping thousands and attending a two-hour, I’m-suckering-you-out-of-your-money motivational seminar, your buddy approaches you about flipping houses. He believes you could make millions, and you too become a believer after drinking the Tony Robbins Kool-aid. You think, "well, it’s worth a shot," and decide to quit your job at Uber hoping that this “get rich quick” scheme will work.

You purchase your first little gem for an amazing $90,000 and quickly put it up for sale for $120,000, believing that this house was waay undervalued, and you and your buddy could make a quick $30,000. Split between the two of you, that’s a profit of $15,000 each. Not too shabby for your first flip.

But after further inspection, you realize that you must continue to pay for utilities, hazard insurance, mortgage insurance, and an exterminator to come out and take care of the hidden rat infestation lurking in the walls. You realize that you must continue to carry all of these expenses (and more) until the house is sold.

You’re realizing that this becoming a money pit and is a lot tougher than that fast talkin' guy wearing the sharp suit and cheap headset at that stupid seminar made it out to be.

You finally get someone to buy the house for $120,000. But after deducting a year’s worth of carrying costs totalling $40,000, you shed a tear knowing you and your buddy are in the hole for $10,000. Nice…and back to Uber you go.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What are Carrying Charges?19 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop what are carrying charges? all right you're a luxury home

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real estate developer you built this awesome house with the entry waterslide [Person riding a waterslide]

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the underground Batcave style freeway connection and of course the chopper pad [Man stood on a chopper pad]

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on top it costs you four million bucks to build okay you built it in like

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Guatemala or somewhere you took out three million bucks in loans at 10%

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interest to do so and if you sold the home for five million dollars well,

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you'd make bank unfortunately some brainless realtor who is actually a [Realtor with green face appears]

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genius at working your ego convinced you to list the home at 8.888

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million he said uh it would be a lucky number really trust me yeah

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it was a high number you'd been hoping to sell for more like a little more than

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half that number but at eight mil in change you would be a financial genius

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hugely profitable and a baller of real estate so you list the home in a huge [Man sitting while covered in cash]

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bull market strong economy people come to the open house which proffer sushi

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and caviar and you know XY and Z and well they laugh the price is crazy high

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unfortunately by the time you fire the realtor a year later the market has gone [Realtor falls to the floor outside house]

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completely into the crapper so you re-list the home at seven million

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crickets and then six more crickets and then

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finally three years later you sell it for five million bucks like right about

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where you wanted to sell in the beginning so everything would have been

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great except for your carrying charges you owed 300 grand a year to rent that

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three million bucks you borrowed to build the home in the first place so

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that's nine hundred thousand dollars just to rent the money for those three [Interest on 3 million bucks highlighted]

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extra years on top of the four million bucks you spent to build the place then

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you had real estate tax heat water maintenance gardener and like 18 other

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carrying costs that go with just maintaining a house in shipshape to you

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know be sold well all in those carrying costs beyond just the rent of

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the money were another six hundred thousand bucks

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so the home cost four million to build but then carrying costs for another

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million and a half dollars leaving your all-in cost to build it at five and a

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half million and you sold at five all that time and work for well nothing

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other than a tax loss of five hundred thousand dollars well guess what

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carrying costs worked this way albeit less dramatically in corporate land as [Man discussing carrying costs]

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well and the most common carrying cost charge is inventory like when Ford has

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gone ahead and built a thousand four cylinder you know cars featuring [Car with one wheel appears]

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best-in-class one wheel drive which doesn't exactly

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fly off the shelves or even drive off of them those thousand cars cost them some

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thirty million bucks to build and they pay seven percent interest on the money

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they borrowed to you know build them and that's 2.1 million dollars a year just

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to rent the money to have a whole lot of inventory sitting there

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well those cars are a low margin business to begin with like maybe 15

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percent operating margins so on thirty million bucks of revenue Ford would hope

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to make four and a half million in operating profits so if they carry the

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cars for an average of a year before they sell well half of their operating

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profits are chewed up just in the inventory cash carrying cost there so no [Man eating operating profits]

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matter how sweet that water slide entry might sound in theory well you might

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want to just save the cash for a rainy day

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