Real Estate Deal Analysis Spreadsheet: Free Rental Template

Written by

Alex Martinez, Founder & CEO, Real Estate Skills. Has wholesaled and flipped houses for over 14 years, been part of 1,000+ real estate transactions, and personally acquired 55+ residential investment properties. Has trained 6,000+ investors nationwide.

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Reviewed by

Ryan Zomorodi, Co-Founder & COO, Real Estate Skills. Licensed real estate agent in California who has bought rental properties in 12+ states. Reviewed the analysis method, formulas, worked example, and stress test in this guide.

✓ Updated October 2026 ✓ Fact-Checked 📄 Free Google Sheets Template Inside Watch on YouTube

Publication history: Originally published December 16, 2025. Updated October 2026 with a complete rental analysis method, a real worked example from Ryan Zomorodi's Nashville rental, input verification steps, a stress test at October 2026 mortgage rates, buy-or-walk-away rules, a small multifamily section, and a rebuilt FAQ. Analysis method and figures verified by Ryan Zomorodi, Co-Founder & COO of Real Estate Skills.

You found a rental. The listing says it cash flows, the agent says it's a great deal, and you honestly can't tell whether to believe either one. Good. That doubt is the right instinct. Early in his investing career, the first agent my co-founder Ryan Zomorodi ever worked with pitched him a rental she called an amazing investment. Ryan ran the numbers himself. At her suggested price and terms, it would have lost him almost $1,000 every single month.

That's the entire job of a deal analysis spreadsheet. It takes the story someone is telling you about a property and replaces it with math you checked yourself. And here's what most beginners miss: deals rarely go wrong in the formulas. They go wrong in the inputs. A property tax bill that jumps after the sale. An insurance number nobody actually quoted. A vacancy line left at zero because the house is rented today.

This guide is for buy-and-hold rentals: single-family homes and small multifamily properties up to four units. If you're flipping or wholesaling, you need a sheet that works backward from the after-repair value (what the house will sell for once it's fixed up), so start with our house flipping spreadsheet or our real estate wholesaling spreadsheet instead. Everything below is built around a real deal Ryan bought, line by line. You can download our free Google Sheets template here and follow along.

What Is a Real Estate Deal Analysis Spreadsheet?

Three numbers do most of the work, so let's define them now.

Cash flow is what's left each month after you collect the rent and pay every bill on the property, including the mortgage. Positive cash flow means the property pays you. Negative cash flow means you're paying it.

Cash-on-cash return is your yearly cash flow divided by the total cash you put into the deal: down payment, closing costs, and any repairs to get it rent-ready. It tells you how hard your actual dollars are working. Ryan's Nashville rental produced $6,696 a year on roughly $110,000 of his own cash, which works out to just over 6%.

Break-even rent is the rent where cash flow hits exactly zero. If the market rent sits barely above it, one bad month can put you underwater. If it sits well above it, you have room for mistakes.

The spreadsheet also calculates a few numbers lenders and commercial buyers care about, like net operating income, cap rate, and DSCR. I'll walk through each one in the next section.

A deal analysis spreadsheet is not a bookkeeping file. Once you own a rental and need to log rent payments, receipts, and tax categories, that's a rental property spreadsheet, which is a different tool for a different job. This one is for the decision before you buy.

So why a spreadsheet instead of running the numbers on a napkin? Ryan can do this math in his head, and in his video on analyzing a rental he does exactly that. But a spreadsheet puts every assumption where you can see it, and it lets you change one number and watch what breaks. Raise the interest rate. Add a month of vacancy. Double the repair budget. That's how you find out whether a deal is actually good or just good on paper.

Underneath every one of these numbers is the question you're really asking: will this property pay me, or will I be paying it? The rest of this guide is about answering that honestly.

The Metrics Every Deal Analysis Spreadsheet Should Calculate

Each metric answers a different question. You don't need to memorize the formulas, because the spreadsheet does the math. But you do need to know what each number is telling you, or you'll end up trusting the wrong one.

If you just need one number fast, our real estate investment calculators each handle a single formula. A deal analysis spreadsheet puts them all together for one property.

Here's every metric, what it means in plain English, and what it came to on Ryan's rental. That deal was a $417,000 new-construction house near Nashville, renting for $3,300 a month, bought with 25% down.

Two of these deserve more explanation, because beginners misread them all the time.

Cap rate is not the main number for a house. Cap rate comes from the commercial world, where buildings are bought and sold based on the income they produce. Single-family homes usually aren't valued that way. They're appraised by comparing them to similar homes that sold nearby. Ryan makes this exact point in his video on analyzing rentals: for your first rental, cash-on-cash return is the more useful number. Cap rate is still worth calculating, because it lets you compare two properties on equal footing, as if you'd paid cash for both. Our guide on the cap rate calculator goes deeper on what a good cap rate looks like in different markets.

DSCR depends on who's asking. If you're financing with a DSCR loan (a mortgage that qualifies you based on the property's income instead of your personal income), the lender's version of this number is the one that counts. Requirements vary by lender. As of 2026, many DSCR lenders accept a minimum around 1.0, the best rates and terms usually go to properties at 1.20 to 1.25 or higher, and commercial lenders more often require 1.25. Lenders don't all calculate it the same way, either. Some divide the monthly rent by the full payment, including taxes, insurance, and HOA dues. Run Ryan's house that way and it scores about 1.61 instead of 1.31. Same property, different method. Ask your lender exactly how they calculate it before you count on a number. If you're shopping for one, our list of DSCR lenders is a good place to start.

If you only look at two numbers on your first rental, make it cash flow and cash-on-cash. Cash flow tells you whether you can hold the property through a bad stretch. Cash-on-cash tells you whether holding it is worth your money. Everything else is context.

How to Calculate Break-Even Rent

Some costs stay the same no matter what the rent is: the mortgage, taxes, insurance, and HOA dues. Others are budgeted as a percentage of the rent, like property management, maintenance, and vacancy. That second group is why you can't just add up the bills and call it break-even.

On Ryan's house, the fixed costs were $1,777 for the mortgage, $150 for taxes, $84 for insurance, and $39 for the HOA, which comes to $2,050 a month. His percentage-based costs added up to 21% of rent: 8% management, 8% vacancy, and 5% maintenance. So break-even rent is $2,050 divided by 0.79, or about $2,595.

His actual rent was $3,300, about $700 above break-even. That gap is your cushion. The thinner it is, the less it takes to turn a good deal into a monthly bill.

Screen the Deal Before You Open the Sheet

I'm firm on this one. If you run a full analysis on every property you find, you'll spend all your time in spreadsheets and never make an offer. The spreadsheet is for deals that already passed a quick sniff test.

The rent-to-price check (often called the 1% rule) compares monthly rent to the purchase price. A $200,000 house renting for $2,000 hits 1%. In expensive markets like San Diego or Nashville, Ryan says rentals usually trade closer to 0.5%, and at that level they rarely cash flow. His own floor is around 0.75%, ideally closer to 1%. His Nashville house rented for $3,300 on a $417,000 price, about 0.79%, which cleared his bar.

The 50% rule assumes about half the rent will go to operating costs (everything except the mortgage). If the other half doesn't cover the mortgage payment, the deal probably won't cash flow. Here's the catch. Half of Ryan's $3,300 rent is $1,650, and his mortgage was $1,777. The 50% rule says walk away. The real analysis showed $558 a month in cash flow. Why? It was brand-new construction, so his actual operating costs came to about 29% of rent, not 50%. An older house with deferred maintenance can run well above 50%.

That's the right way to use both rules: as screens that tell you which deals deserve a closer look, never as the final answer. If you want the full explanation of each rule, our guide to using a rental property calculator covers them in depth.

How to Verify Every Number Before It Goes in the Sheet

A spreadsheet can't tell you whether a number is true. It can only do math on whatever you type in. Put in the seller's optimistic rent and last year's tax bill, and you'll get a beautiful result for a deal that loses money.

Automated estimates are a fine starting point, not an answer. Even Zillow's published Zestimate accuracy shows its value estimates for homes that aren't listed for sale miss the eventual sale price by around 7% at the median. Rent estimates have the same problem, and different sites routinely disagree with each other. Here's how to check each input before it goes in the sheet.

How to Verify Rent

Start with the free estimators, but expect them to give you different numbers. That's normal. Treat the spread as a best case and a worst case, not as an answer.

Then go to the rentals actually listed right now. Match the bed and bath count, the condition, and the neighborhood. Then match the things renters pay extra for: in-unit laundry versus a shared machine, a garage or dedicated parking versus street parking, and a pet policy that allows dogs, cats, or neither. Each one changes what a tenant will pay.

The listings themselves tell you more than the asking price. Look at how long each one has been sitting, whether the price has been cut or raised, and how much interest it's getting. A rental sitting for 60 days with two price cuts is telling you the market rent is lower than the sign says.

Then do what Ryan did. Call property managers in the area. On his Nashville house, he got rent opinions from three different managers on top of his own listing research. Together they put the rent between $3,000 and $3,300 a month. He underwrote at the top of that range, $3,300, and eventually leased it at the high end. I'd always run the bottom of your range too, and I'll show you what $3,000 does to his numbers in the stress-test section.

How to Verify Property Taxes

This is one of the most common surprises for new investors. The tax history on Zillow or Redfin shows what the seller has been paying, sometimes for years, at an old assessed value. Once you buy, the county may reassess the property based on your price, and your tax bill can jump.

Ryan's rule is simple: find the local property tax rate through the county assessor's website, your title company, or a local agent, and multiply it by your purchase price. How and when reassessment happens varies by state and county, so confirm the rule where you're buying. On his Nashville house, this came to about $150 a month.

How to Verify Insurance

A landlord policy (often called a dwelling policy) is different from the homeowners policy you'd buy for a home you live in, and it's priced differently. That's why national averages don't help much here. They mostly track homeowners policies.

What those averages do show is how fast this line can move. Rate Insurance's 2026 Home Insurance Trends Report found average homeowners premiums rose 9.16% in 2025. Insurify's 2026 homeowners report measured 12%, with jumps of 34% in Minnesota and 33% in Colorado. If insurance is a big line in your deal, get the real quote, and then stress-test what happens if it rises again. Ryan's quote on the Nashville house came to about $84 a month.

How to Verify Operating Expenses and HOA Fees

You're allowed to ask for proof, and you should. A profit and loss statement, recent utility bills, and repair receipts show what the property actually costs to run. If the seller's expense sheet is full of tidy round numbers, they're probably guesses. Use your own estimates for those lines instead.

Find out which utilities you'll pay. On a single-family house with one meter, you can usually put the tenant on all of them. Ryan did exactly that on his Nashville house, so his utility line was zero. Small multifamily properties often share meters, which means the owner pays.

If there's an HOA, the dues are only part of the story. Read the HOA documents for any special assessments (one-time charges to owners for big projects) and for rental restrictions. Ryan's HOA came to about $39 a month and covered amenities like the community pool.

And if the property needs work before a tenant can move in, get a real contractor bid for those rent-ready repairs. That number goes into your total cash invested, so a lowball guess here makes every return look better than it is.

How to Verify Your Loan Terms

Your mortgage is usually your biggest monthly cost, so a quarter-point mistake on the rate shows up in every number downstream.

Be careful about borrowing someone else's terms, too. Ryan's 5.5% rate on the Nashville house came from a builder incentive that was roughly two points below the market rate at the time. That's a great deal when you can get it. It's a terrible assumption to build your spreadsheet around. Use the rate a lender actually quotes you, then test a higher one.

How to Build a Rental Property Analysis Spreadsheet, Step by Step

1. Enter the purchase price and total cash invested
2. Calculate the mortgage payment
3. Enter rent, other income, and vacancy
4. Add every operating expense
5. Budget repairs and CapEx separately
6. Calculate NOI and cash flow
7. Add return rows and a decision row

The order matters. Each block uses numbers from the one above it, so if you build it top to bottom, the sheet basically checks itself. The formulas below work the same in Google Sheets and Excel.

Our free Google Sheets template already covers steps 1 through 4 and calculates cash flow and cash-on-cash return for you. Steps 5 through 7 show you how to add the rows it doesn't include yet: a separate CapEx reserve, NOI, cap rate, DSCR, and break-even rent.

Step 1: Enter the Purchase Price and Total Cash Invested

Total cash invested is every dollar that leaves your bank account to buy the property and get it ready for a tenant. It's the bottom half of the cash-on-cash formula, so leaving something out makes your return look better than it really is.

In the sheet, it's one simple sum: down payment plus closing costs plus rent-ready repairs. If your down payment is a percentage in cell B2 and the price is in B1, the down payment cell is =B1*B2.

Step 2: Calculate the Mortgage Payment

The loan amount is the purchase price minus your down payment. PMT (short for "payment") is built into both Google Sheets and Excel. The minus sign in front of the loan amount just makes the result show as a positive number. Microsoft's PMT function guide confirms the result is principal and interest only, and the same formula works in Google Sheets.

This row is principal and interest only. Principal is the part of each payment that pays down the loan. Interest is the lender's charge for lending you the money. Property taxes and insurance get their own rows in step 4. If you put them here too, you'll count them twice and kill a good deal on paper. And if your loan requires mortgage insurance, add that as its own line as well.

Step 3: Enter Rent, Other Income, and Vacancy

Gross rent is what the property earns if it's occupied every day of the year. It won't be. Tenants move out, and it takes time to turn the unit and find the next one. Vacancy is the percentage of rent you budget for those empty stretches.

In the sheet, effective rent is =rent*(1-vacancy). Ryan's Nashville house: $3,300 at 8% vacancy leaves about $3,036 a month of rent you can actually count on. (Ryan lists vacancy as an expense line instead of subtracting it from rent. The math comes out the same either way.)

One warning about our free template: the vacancy cell starts at 0%. Change it before you trust any result.

Step 4: Add Every Operating Expense

These are your operating expenses, the costs of keeping the property running and rented. Use the numbers you verified in the last section, not the seller's.

Property management deserves special attention. Ryan has found it usually runs about 8% to 10% of collected rent across the markets he's bought in. He self-manages his Nashville house, but he still budgets 8% for management. His reasoning: someday he'll hand it off, and a deal that only works because you're working for free isn't a good deal. I'd give every new investor that same advice.

Check how your property manager charges for leasing, too. Some fold it into their monthly percentage, and others charge a separate fee every time they place a new tenant. Ryan's 8% included leasing.

Step 5: Budget Repairs and CapEx Separately

Mixing these two is how investors get blindsided. A leaky faucet and a dead air conditioner are very different problems, and one percentage can't cover both on an older house.

• Repairs: the calls you get from tenants, like a broken oven, a clogged drain, or a leaking fridge. Budget a percentage of rent. Ryan uses 5% on new construction and goes as high as 10% to 20% on very old properties with a lot of deferred maintenance (repairs the last owner put off).
• CapEx: the big stuff with a known lifespan, like the roof, the HVAC system, and the water heater. Here's a simple way to budget it. Take the replacement cost, divide by the years of life it has left, then divide by 12. For example, a $15,000 roof with 15 years left works out to about $83 a month. Add a row for each major system, or one combined CapEx row.

On Ryan's Nashville rental, everything was brand new, so his 5% maintenance line covered both. On a 1970s house, I'd want separate rows. Our free template doesn't have a CapEx line yet, so add one, or use the "Miscellaneous" row for it.

Step 6: Calculate NOI and Cash Flow

Put the NOI row above the mortgage on purpose. NOI tells you what the property earns on its own. Cash flow tells you what's left for you after the lender is paid. Keeping them separate lets you see whether a weak deal is a property problem or a financing problem.

In the sheet: NOI is =effective_rent - SUM(expense_rows), and monthly cash flow is =NOI - mortgage. Multiply by 12 for the annual numbers.

A heads-up for anyone using our template: its "Total Expenses" line includes the mortgage, so that total isn't NOI. Add an NOI row that subtotals everything above the mortgage, and you'll be able to read both.

Step 7: Add Return Rows and a Decision Row

Here are the formulas, using annual numbers:

• Cash-on-cash return: =annual_cash_flow / total_cash_invested
• Cap rate: =annual_NOI / purchase_price
• DSCR: =annual_NOI / (monthly_mortgage*12)
• Break-even rent: =fixed_costs / (1 - percentage_costs), where fixed costs are the mortgage, taxes, insurance, and HOA, and percentage costs are management, vacancy, and repairs as a combined share of rent

The decision row is the most important row in the sheet, and it's the one almost nobody builds. Write your minimums down before you look at a deal. Otherwise you'll talk yourself into whatever the numbers say once you're excited about a property. The $200 and 6% in the example are placeholders, not recommendations. I'll cover how to set your own in the go or no-go section.

Worked Example: Ryan's Nashville Rental, Line by Line

This is how to analyze a rental deal in a spreadsheet, using a real one. My co-founder Ryan bought this house near Nashville, Tennessee, and he walks through every number in the video below.

The property is a brand-new four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house of about 2,000 square feet. Ryan found it on the MLS as a direct-to-builder sale, put it under contract for $417,000 before construction was finished, and paid full market value. He still hasn't seen it in person. Before he committed, he checked the property records and found that some neighboring homes were owned by large investment firms, while most of the street was owner-occupied. To him, that pointed to a neighborhood with room to appreciate.

Here's the deal laid out row by row, in the same order as the seven steps above.

How To Analyze A Rental Property (FAST & SIMPLE)!

Ryan runs these exact numbers by hand, line by line, on the Nashville house. The spreadsheet above is the same math, set up so you can repeat it on every deal and change any input to see what breaks.

 

A 6% return on six figures of cash isn't exciting. Ryan says so himself. So why did he buy it?

Because the 6% is deliberately conservative. He budgeted 8% for management on a house he manages himself, and 8% for vacancy on a house that has had no vacancy. Take out just the management line, and the same deal returns closer to 9%. He didn't count on that upside. He underwrote as if he'd hired a manager and lost a month of rent every year, and the deal still worked.

Cash flow isn't the only way a rental pays you, either. Every mortgage payment includes some principal, so your tenant's rent is also paying down your loan. On this house, that was roughly $4,200 in the first year. There can also be tax benefits from depreciation, but those depend entirely on your own tax situation, so talk to a CPA before you count on them. IRS Publication 527 explains how depreciation works on residential rental property, and our guide to bonus depreciation covers how investors use it.

And Ryan didn't count appreciation at all. He thinks the neighborhood has room to grow, but a deal that only works if the house goes up in value isn't a rental investment. It's a bet. Cash flow has to stand on its own first.

How to Stress-Test a Rental Deal

This section shows how sensitivity testing works on a real example. It's educational, not financial advice, and your own numbers will differ. Confirm your financing and costs with a licensed lender and your own advisors.

A mentor once told Ryan that the only thing you can count on about a projection is that it'll be wrong. He's right. Your spreadsheet is a guess about the future, and the future doesn't care what you typed in. So instead of asking "does this deal work?", ask "how wrong can I be before it stops working?"

That's all a stress test is. You take your finished analysis, push one input to a realistic bad-case number, and see what's left. Then you put it back and push the next one. Here's what that looks like on Ryan's house, starting from his actual numbers: $558 a month in cash flow and about a 6.1% cash-on-cash return on roughly $110,000 invested.

The interest rate is the line that matters most. Ryan's 5.5% came from a builder incentive that was about two points below the market at the time. As of mid-October 2026, Freddie Mac's weekly mortgage rate survey shows the average 30-year fixed rate at 7.40%, and investment property mortgage rates usually run about half a point to a full point higher than that. At 8%, the same house with the same rent and the same costs produces $38 a month. The deal goes from solid to barely breaking even, and its DSCR falls from about 1.31 to about 1.02, right at the edge of what many lenders will accept.

Put another way: at 8%, the house would need to cost roughly $323,000 instead of $417,000 to produce the same $558 a month. Same property. The interest rate moved the price you can afford by almost $100,000.

Small lines can still hurt. Insurance was only $84 a month on this house, so even a 34% jump (the size of Minnesota's 2025 average increase) barely moved the result. But in states where premiums run several thousand dollars a year, the same percentage jump can wipe out cash flow on its own. Size each stress to how big that line is in your deal.

The real danger is everything going wrong together. No single scenario above kills the deal at Ryan's rate. But a year with lower rent, longer vacancies, and heavier repairs, all at the same time, leaves about $50 a month. Your cushion is a lot thinner than any single test suggests.

Here's how I'd use this on your own deals:

1. Finish your normal analysis first, with verified numbers.
2. Add a "stress" column next to your inputs, so you can swap in worse-case values without overwriting your real ones.
3. Test the rate at the actual quote you'd get as an investor, plus a cushion if you aren't locked yet.
4. Test rent at the bottom of your range, not the top.
5. Test vacancy and maintenance at the levels you'd expect in a bad year for that property's age and market.
6. Run one combined bad-year scenario.

If the deal still cash flows in the combined scenario, you have a deal you can hold through a rough stretch. If it only works in the best case, you don't have a deal. You have a hope.

When the Numbers Say Buy and When to Walk Away

This section explains how investors make buy or pass decisions. It's educational, not financial advice. Your own goals, finances, and market should drive your decision, so talk to a licensed financial professional before you commit to a purchase.

The most important decision happens before you open the spreadsheet. Write down your minimums first: the lowest monthly cash flow and cash-on-cash return you'll accept. If you wait until you've fallen in love with a property, you'll find a way to make the numbers say yes. Everyone does.

What's a Good Cash-on-Cash Return?

When Ryan finished analyzing his Nashville rental, he asked the only question that matters about a 6% return: compared to what? Compared to a savings account, it's fine. Compared to another rental that produces 10% with the same risk, it isn't.

Your market shapes what's realistic. In high-demand, high-price areas like San Diego, where Ryan lives and invests, buyers often accept very thin cash flow, and sometimes even negative cash flow in the first year or two, because they expect rents and values to rise. In much of the Midwest, cash-on-cash returns above 10% are easier to find, but property values usually grow more slowly. Ryan has invested in both kinds of markets, and he thinks most investors should eventually own some of each.

What I'd tell a beginner is simpler: pick a minimum you can defend, write it down, and walk away from anything below it. Our guide on how to calculate ROI on rental property goes deeper on the other ways a rental pays you.

Ryan's Rules for Saying Yes

Never buy negative cash flow, especially on your first rental. A property that costs you money every month has to be fed from your paycheck, and that pressure doesn't go away. Ryan would rather your first rental be an easy one: a property that more than covers its costs, puts a little money in your pocket, and lets you wait while the mortgage gets paid down and the value has time to grow.

Underwrite conservatively, then let reality surprise you. Budget management even if you'll self-manage. Budget vacancy even if the house is rented today. Ryan did both on his Nashville rental, and the deal still worked on paper at about 6%. In real life it's done better, because the costs he planned for haven't all shown up. That's the order you want: conservative numbers first, upside second.

Don't let appreciation rescue a bad deal. Most of the money Ryan has made in real estate has come from properties going up in value over time. He still doesn't count it when deciding whether to buy. If a deal only works when you add in future appreciation, you're making a bet, not an investment.

Go or No-Go Checklist

It's a go when:

• Cash flow is positive at your real, quoted interest rate, not an advertised one
• It meets the minimum cash flow and cash-on-cash return you wrote down before you started
• Every major input (rent, taxes, insurance, expenses) is verified, not taken from the listing
• It stays at or above $0 in a combined bad-year scenario
• You'll still have cash reserves after closing. Many investment lenders require several months of payments in reserve anyway, and you'll want them regardless.

Walk away when:

• It's negative on cash flow in the base case
• It only works at the top of your rent range or with a rate you can't actually get
• You can't verify a big input, like taxes or insurance
• It only makes sense if the property goes up in value

What a Spreadsheet Can't Tell You

I'll be straight with you. A great spreadsheet can still approve a bad deal if the problem never made it into the sheet.

• Condition: The sheet assumes your repair and CapEx numbers are right. A professional inspection is what tells you whether the roof, plumbing, and foundation match those assumptions.
• Demand: It assumes your rent will hold. If the area is losing jobs or flooding with new rentals, your verified rent today may not be the rent next year.
• Local rules: Landlord-tenant laws vary widely by state and city: how long an eviction takes, whether rents are capped, what licenses or inspections a rental needs. None of that shows up as a formula, and all of it affects your returns. Check them before you buy.
• You: It can't tell you whether you have enough cash left over for surprises, or whether you'll actually enjoy being a landlord. Both matter as much as the cash flow.

And it's the wrong tool for some properties. Short-term rentals run on nightly rates, occupancy, and furnishing costs, which is a different model entirely. Heavy fixer-uppers you plan to renovate, rent, and refinance follow the BRRRR method, which needs its own analysis. Buildings with five or more units are valued and financed on their income in a way single-family homes aren't. If that's what you're buying, start with our guide on how to invest in commercial real estate.

Adjusting the Spreadsheet for a Duplex, Triplex, or Fourplex

Small multifamily properties (two to four units) use the same math as a single-family rental. The structure of the sheet is what changes.

• Rent and vacancy by unit: List each unit's rent on its own row, because units rarely rent for exactly the same amount and leases end at different times. Vacancy works differently too. Instead of the whole property sitting empty, you'll usually have one unit turning over at a time. That's less painful in any single month, but it happens more often, so don't budget less vacancy just because you have more units.
• Shared costs: On a single-family house, the tenant usually pays every utility. Small multifamily properties often share a water, sewer, or trash meter, which means the owner pays those bills. You may also pay for things a single-family tenant handles, like common-area lighting, landscaping, and snow removal. Each one is a new expense row.
• Repairs and CapEx: More units means more appliances, water heaters, and turnovers. Budget repairs per unit, and list shared systems like the roof once.
• Financing and value: Two- to four-unit properties are still financed with residential mortgages, just like a single-family home. If you plan to live in one of the units, different loan programs and down payment requirements may apply. Talk to a lender about that before you run the numbers. Buildings with five or more units cross into commercial lending and valuation, which is a different analysis.

Our free template has one total rent line, so you can add up the units and enter the total. Or add a row for each unit above it, which makes vacancy easier to track.

Real Estate Deal Analysis Spreadsheet FAQs

Final Thoughts on Using a Real Estate Deal Analysis Spreadsheet

A real estate deal analysis spreadsheet won't find you a good deal, and it can't save a bad one. Its job is to make sure you never buy a rental because of a story someone told you.

If you take one thing from Ryan's Nashville house, make it this: the deal worked because he verified every input, underwrote it as if he'd pay for everything, and only then decided. Run that same house at today's interest rates, and it barely breaks even. Same property, same rent. The math is what tells you the difference, and it only takes one bad input to fool you.

So here's your next step. Pick one rental that's listed for sale in your market right now. Verify the rent with live listings, recalculate the taxes at the asking price, and get a real insurance quote. Run it through the sheet, then stress-test it. Do that on ten properties and you'll know your market's numbers better than most of the agents selling them.

And if you're running numbers and nothing passes, the problem is usually the deals, not the math. A spreadsheet can only judge the properties you feed it. Our free Ultimate Guide to Start Real Estate Investing lays out the path we teach: start with wholesaling to learn how to find and price deals, move into flipping, and then build toward rentals like the one in this guide.

About The Author

Alex Martinez

Founder & CEO, Real Estate Skills

Alex Martinez is the Founder and CEO of Real Estate Skills. He has wholesaled and flipped houses for over 14 years, been part of 1,000+ real estate transactions, personally acquired 55+ residential investment properties, and trained 6,000+ investors nationwide.

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Real Estate Skills is not a law firm, lender, or financial advisor, and the information in this article is provided for educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Mortgage rates, insurance costs, property taxes, and landlord-tenant laws vary by location and change over time. Real estate investing carries risk, past results do not guarantee future outcomes, and the examples in this article are illustrations, not typical results. Always consult a licensed lender, tax professional, and attorney before buying an investment property.