When you borrow money from a hard money lender, your lender will come out and look at the property to determine its after-repair value, or ARV. But you shouldn’t even go that far unless you’ve evaluated the property’s ARV yourself – otherwise, you could be about to sink your money into a losing deal. How to Determine ARV Your preliminary research on a house should include looking at other, similar houses that are in better condition and determining what they’re selling for. These are called comparables (comps for short). They’re recently sold and for-sale properties similar to the subject property,