Rental Property Calculator

Find better deals with this free online rental property calculator

Looking for the perfect rental property calculator or BRRRR investment analysis tool? You came to the right place.

Let’s all agree, reviewing rental properties is time-consuming and sometimes overwhelming. As a real estate investor, you will have to look at tens or hundreds of deals before finding the one that works for you. So you need to be able to quickly identify great opportunities and tailor your offer to get a shot against other seasoned investors.

Our online rental property calculator is all about that: running numbers for you so you can efficiently tell apart great deals from bad investments.

And if you’re looking for additional premium features, check out our Rental Property Analysis Spreadsheet. It includes full 30-year forecasts, a maximum purchase price estimate, scenario analysis, plenty of reports, and much more!

Download our Free Excel Rental Property Analysis Spreadsheet

How to use the Calculator

Using the calculator is really easy. Simply enter your assumptions in the blue cells and the calculator will do the rest for you!

How to fill out the Rental Property Calculator

The online rental property calculator is composed of 2 sections:

1. Operating Assumptions

This is where you enter your assumptions regarding your rental property. It includes 5 categories:

Purchase Assumptions

Indicate your property purchase price and the estimated after-repair value (or ARV). You can also enter your financing assumptions in that section (down payment, interest rate, loan term, etc.)

  • If your loan is an Interest-Only Loan, indicate the length (in years) of the interest-only period

Acquisition Costs

Enter your acquisition costs, including refurbishment/repair costs, purchasing cost, holding costs and other costs

  • If you plan on financing some of these costs with debt, enter “1” next to that amount
  • Holding costs refer to the cost of holding a property before renting it. For instance, you may have to spend a few weeks renovating the place before it’s ready for your next tenant, so costs such as utilities, insurance, HOA, etc that occurred during that period would be added to that category
  • Once filled out, the calculator will estimate your total project upfront cost and how it is being financed

Sale Assumptions

Indicate your holding period (i.e. how long you expect to hold the property). If you do not intend to sell the property, enter 30 (which is the maximum number of forecasted years run by the calculator)

  • Don’t forget to enter your expected selling cost (as a % of your property value at sale). Although it varies from one project to another, market standard is around 7-8%

Rental Income

Enter your monthly rent and the expected annual rent increase. If you have multiple units, simply add them up in that cell

  • You have the ability to add other types of income related to your property (such as parking, laundry, etc.) if desired
  • Enter your expected vacancy rate (i.e. time of the year when the property is not being rented – such as when switching tenants or performing renovations). You can select the appropriate unit as needed (% of rent, weeks per year or months per year)

Operating Expenses

Enter up to 7 different operating expenses. 3 can be entered as a monthly cost, 2 can be entered as an annual cost and the last 2 can be entered as a % of rent (i.e. variable costs)

  • For each expense, indicate the expected annual increase. Note that variable expenses don’t have an expected annual increase as they will vary proportionally with your rent estimate
  • Capital Expenditures (or CAPEX) refer to big-ticket items that need to be replaced every so often but not every month or year (such as roof, appliances, driveways, plumbing system, or other large infrequent items). Market practice is usually between 7% and 10% of your gross rent.
2. Summary Results

This section does not require any input from you and will describe the result of the analysis performed by the rental calculator. It will provide useful financial data over your holding period as well as calculate key financial metrics (described below).

The uses and sources table will also help you quickly identify how your project costs are allocated and how they are financed.

Finally, summary projections are also provided (each year for the first 5 years, then years 10-15-20 and 30).

What financial metrics are calculated?

This free rental property calculator will estimate 6 financial metrics:

ARV Capitalization Rate

Calculated as Annual Net Operating Income / After-repair Value. This ratio is an estimation of an investor’s potential return on investment. It’s an important ratio but it has its shortcomings:

  • The Cap Rate only reflects a limited period in time (i.e. the 12 months of net operating income used for its calculation)
  • It does not take into account leverage and does not include any mortgage payments

Capitalization Rate

Similar to the previous ratio but calculated based on the Property purchase price rather than its After-Repair Value. It has the same shortcomings. More about the Capitalization Rate

Cash on Cash return (or Return on Investment)

Calculated as annual pre-tax cash flow (year 1) / Total Cash Invested. More about the cash on cash ratio

Internal Rate of Return

The IRR estimates the value a property generates during the time frame you own it. Effectively, the IRR is the % of interest you earn on each dollar invested in a property over the entire holding period. This ratio is a much more comprehensive ratio than Cap Rate and Cash on Cash return as it takes into account all aspects of the transaction over time (cash flow generation, leverage, property appreciation, time value of money, etc.). More about Internal Rate of Return

1% Rule

The 1% rule is a guideline frequently referenced by real estate investors when evaluating properties. This rule of thumb states that the monthly rent should be equal to or greater than 1% of the total purchase price of an investment property. In practice, you may find it very difficult to acquire properties fitting that criteria, especially in certain expensive local real estate markets.

Price to Rent

Calculated as (Purchase Price + Repair Costs) / Total Annual Income. The price-to-rent ratio is the ratio of a home price to annualized rent in a given location and is usually used as a benchmark for estimating whether it is cheaper to rent or own a property.

Frequently Asked Questions

Absolutely, all of our calculators are completely free to use.

No, this calculator has been specifically built to analyze rental properties & buy and hold investments.

If you want to analyze and manage a house flipping project, please check out our free House Flipping & Rehab Spreadsheet

This online calculator cannot be downloaded as a spreadsheet. If you wish to have your own spreadsheet, check out our free Rental Property Analysis Spreadsheet

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