How We Score Ohio Properties for Flips, Wholesale, and Rentals
Every real-estate strategy asks the same question of a property — "what is it worth to ME, on MY exit path?" — from a different angle. A flipper cares about the gap between purchase and renovated value. A wholesaler cares about distressed owners and assignment margins. A landlord cares about yield. We built the RE Data Refinery to answer all three from one dataset, and this post explains what the scores actually measure.
The pipeline: public records in, scores out
The raw material is public: county property records, tax delinquency lists, sheriff-sale calendars, and property-market data including automated estimate tracks. Across 18 Ohio cities the pipeline now covers more than 10,000 properties, enriched where available with parcel and neighborhood attributes. The Columbus set refreshes on a daily cadence overnight; the wider Ohio sweep runs on a longer cycle. Nothing in the sheet is scraped from a login wall — it is all public or licensable data, cleaned and joined.
Flip score
The flip score asks: how much room is there between what this property costs and what a renovated exit could plausibly bring? It weighs the spread between listing price and neighborhood sold-price benchmarks, the age and size profile that typically correlates with renovation demand, and how comparable properties in the area have moved. High scores signal properties where the math is already plausible — not guarantees, but properties where the underwriting conversation is worth having.
Wholesale score
Wholesale is a velocity game: you profit from the spread between a motivated seller and an investor buyer, fast. The wholesale score leans into distress signals — tax-delinquent status, recent sheriff-sale proximity, ownership patterns that correlate with motivated sellers — together with price bands where assignment margins historically breathe. This is the tab most of our early customers filter first.
See the live sheet — 18 Ohio cities, 10,000+ scored properties
Daily refreshed Flip and Wholesale rankings, Tax Delinquency Watchlist, Sheriff Sales, and pre-foreclosure leads — the full pipeline is on the RE Data Refinery page, or open the data product here.
Rental yield and market heat
For buy-and-hold underwriting we compute rental yield percent — expected annual rent over total acquisition cost — plus a market-heat index that tracks how quickly inventory is moving in the surrounding area. Hot markets compress your entry negotiation; cooling markets reward patience. Yield and heat together tell you whether a property is a cash-flow candidate in a neighborhood still worth buying into.
What the scores are — and are not
The scores are screening tools, not valuations. A high flip score means the public-data math looks inviting; it does not replace walking the property, checking condition, or pulling title. We say this directly in the sheet because our customers use it to prioritize where they spend their underwriting hours, not as a substitute for them. The same discipline applies to our federal-grants screening — the tool surfaces candidates; the operator closes.
Working with the sheet
The Refinery ships as a Google Sheet with tabs built per decision: a Dashboard for at-a-glance totals, ranked Flip and Wholesale tables, Rental Yields, a Tax Delinquency Watchlist, Sheriff Sales, and city-specific tabs for markets from Cleveland to Cincinnati. Subscribers get the live link and the refresh cadence; we have run the sheet commercially all quarter and the scoring code evolves with the data.
Curious whether your market or strategy is covered? The RE Data Refinery page lists exactly what each tab contains, and you can always ask about a city extension — the pipeline is designed to add counties. If you are here for the data-products angle rather than real estate itself, our store page explains the broader product family.
Want the same scoring on your markets?
The RE Data Refinery ships the live sheet — ranked Flip Opportunities, Wholesale Leads, Tax Delinquency Watchlist, Sheriff Sales, and city tabs across 18 Ohio markets. New counties can be added on request.
Open the RE Data Refinery