Fix & Flip Financing in 2026: Hard Money, DSCR, and Private Lenders Compared

What are fix & flip rates in 2026?

Fed funds sitting at 3.5–3.75%. 30-year fixed conforming at 6.4%. Hard money for fix & flip: 10.5%–12.5% depending on experience, LTV, and market. That's down from the 2023 peak of 13.5% but nowhere near the 8% seen in 2021.

Your financing choice — hard money, DSCR conversion, or private capital — moves your profit by 20–40% on a typical 6-month flip. It's not a minor line item.

What does hard money cost in 2026?

Typical 2026 terms:

• Rate: 10.5–12.5%
• Points: 1.5–3.0
• LTC (loan-to-cost): 85–90%
• LTV (loan-to-ARV): up to 70%
• Term: 6–12 months
• Rehab funded via draws (reimbursement after inspection)

When to use it: first 5 flips, anyone without $200k+ liquid, any deal where speed of close matters (7–10 day close).

The real cost. On a $200,000 loan at 11.5% for 6 months + 2 points, you pay $11,500 interest + $4,000 points = $15,500 to borrow $200k for 6 months. That's 7.75% of your loan in 6 months — which flows straight through your ROI.

When should you use a DSCR loan on a flip?

DSCR (Debt Service Coverage Ratio) loans are 30-year investor mortgages that qualify based on the property's rent, not your W-2 income. They aren't fix & flip loans — but they're the plan B when a flip doesn't sell.

2026 rates: 7.5–8.5% for a 1.20+ DSCR.

When to use it: you finished the flip, listed it, and 90 days later it hasn't sold. Instead of dropping your price, refinance out of hard money into a DSCR loan and rent the property until the market unfreezes. This "flip → hold" pivot is what saved many 2022 flippers.

The math to check first. Take your ARV, apply a rent estimate (usually 0.7–1% of ARV), and confirm the property cash-flows after PITI at 8%. If it doesn't, you don't have a plan B and you shouldn't buy the deal.

When does private capital beat hard money?

Once you're past 5–10 flips, private capital — money from doctors, dentists, other real estate investors, family offices — becomes cheaper than hard money.

Typical terms: 8–10% interest, 0–1 points, 100% LTC on the right relationships. Interest-only, 12-month term, often with a small profit share (10–20% of net profit) instead of points.

When to use it: every deal, once you have it. Every dollar you shave off financing goes straight to net profit — a 300bps rate difference on a $250k project is $3,750 saved per 6 months.

How to build the network. Track record + transparency. Every closed flip becomes a one-page case study you can send to prospective lenders showing purchase, rehab, hold, sale, and lender return. Investors fund people they can underwrite.

How do hard money, bridge, private capital, and DSCR compare?

Same deal — $200,000 loan, 6 months — under each source:

Difference between hard money and private capital on a single deal: $6,500 in your pocket. Across 6 flips a year, that's $39,000 — a full extra deal.

Which financing should you model in your underwrite?

Financing costs bite hardest where holding periods are long. Check the local hard-money rates and days on market on the Las Vegas, NV, Raleigh, NC, Phoenix, AZ, and Tampa, FL pages, or browse all 20 markets.

Model every deal at the financing you actually have, not the financing you want. If your only capital source is hard money at 11.5%, that's your input. Better financing is a project to build over 12–24 months, not an assumption to plug into today's underwrite.

Run this exact math on your next deal in the analyzer — every input above (rate, points, LTC, months) is on the calculator.