Flip score
Flip score
Section titled “Flip score”Buy–rehab–sell. What it measures: can you renovate here and resell into real demand — resale liquidity first, then appreciation, buyer depth, and momentum. Weights below are the engine’s (model p0a-2026.07); the map and the API compute identically since the 2026-07 parity fix.
What feeds it
Section titled “What feeds it”All inputs are county-relative percentiles (50 = median tract). Definitions are maintained in the data dictionary (as-of 2026-07-09).
| Factor | Weight | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Resale liquidity block | 30% | Redfin, latest quarter, by ZIP |
| — sale-to-list ratio | 50% of block | do sellers get their price |
| — days-on-market (quartile) | 30% of block | exit speed |
| — sold-above-list share | 20% of block | bidding depth |
| 1-yr price appreciation | 15% | ZHVI year-over-year, ZIP-blended |
| Buyer income | 15% | HMDA 2024 median applicant income |
| Halo frontier | 15% | loan-size gap vs pricier neighboring tracts |
| Renovation + business momentum | 13% | Chicago permits (18 mo) + new licenses (12 mo) |
| Capital-flow momentum | 12% | HMDA volume and loan size, 2022→2024 |
What it penalizes
Section titled “What it penalizes”- Within 1.5 mi of a financially distressed municipality: −22 points (−8 within 3 mi). Tax-base instability is an exit-liquidity risk.
- Within 1.2 mi of a point-of-sale-inspection town: −10. Closing friction on the resale.
Coverage damping
Section titled “Coverage damping”Coverage = share of five universal signals present (capital, yield, market heat, income, halo). Below 70%, the score loses 0.5 points per missing coverage point — a thin-data tract cannot quietly outrank a well-measured one. If the weighted inputs are entirely null, the tract is unscored (null), not zero.
Honest caveats
Section titled “Honest caveats”The liquidity block is ZIP-level, so a tract inherits its ZIP’s Redfin stats. Momentum is Chicago-only — suburban tracts carry no momentum signal. The weights are hand-set for face validity, not learned from outcomes; P3 replaces them with weights trained on forward 12-month appreciation and permit→resale spread pairs, and adds an explicit liquidity sub-score so a flip composite can never again ignore whether anyone actually buys there.