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How to find the ORIGINAL sales price

WARNING, this is NOT a very mathematical approach to finding the original sales price of a property. This is a plug and play equation I compiled after watching a LOT of videos on this subject. Mathematicians would cry at the multiple steps I leave out. IF you would know the many steps it would be a much more flexible approach to math, you would understand how to manipulate the equation to know all kinds of things… but it would also be much more complicated and to  save myself losing everyone in that complicated explanation let’s just make it plug in play and let all the people who KNOW math cry at how much I’m leaving out…. But then again, all the people who KNOW math don’t need this… Anyway, SO this works for this ONE scenario, Which is, we get the sales price, we get the profit made in a percentage amount, and we’re asked to state the original price…  let’s make this as easy as possible.

My simplified real estate math equation

So here is my equation. It goes, the OG, otherwise known as the original gangster (original price) is unknown. .. Equals the current price (which they’re giving us) divided by 1.(whatever percentage they give us)

OG = CURRENT PRICE/ 1. (percentage they state was profited)

So lets say they ask

The sales price is 500,000 and they profited 29%… what’s the original price?  it would like this

OG= 500,000/1.29

Plug it into your calculator and you get $387,596.899 cents and that’s the OG Ok, its that easy.

Lets plug in other numbers to see it redone so you can see how switching numbers and percentages works just fine….Lets say they ask

The sales price is 500,000 and they profited 28%… what’s the original price?  it would like this

OG= 500,000/1.28

Plug it into your calculator and you get $390,625 and that’s the OG

So let’s do one more calculation to find the original sales price of a property

OK, so one more calculation to find the original sales price. Lets plug in one more set of numbers to see it redone and how you can switch numbers and percentages….

Sales price is $11.00 and you profited 10%

Now I think some of you could do this in your head because of the basic numbers but GOOD, lets plug it into the formula and see that it works and it works and it works

So we put the OG (what we don’t know) = 11 divided by 1.10

And we get the original price was $10

So I’ve seen a lot of tutorials on how to do these with a ton more steps that are honestly more informative for the mathematician… but again, if you don’t want to learn all the math and can learn that equation, you can do this one scenario for the test.

If you’re looking to get your WV Real Estate License and need a down to earth approach to learning these concepts, Spruce School of Real Estate offers the best online real estate course in West Virginia. Spruce has been teaching in our home state for over 28 years now and has the success rate to prove our ability to teach these otherwise confusing topics.

If you’re shopping for a real estate math calculator you can check this out https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Industries-3415-Qualifier-Calculator/dp/B000669496?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_1