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Due Diligence & Buying
The listing tells you a story; due diligence tells you the truth. These guides cover the checks that happen between offer and closing — reading the rent roll, surviving the appraisal, pinning down market rent, and inheriting tenants — so the numbers you underwrote are the numbers you get.
Guides
How to read a rent roll: verify a rental's income before you buy (2026)
A rent roll is where the seller's story meets the leases — and the gap is the deal. Why a fourplex that "grosses $63,600" is really collecting $42,900, how to split the $20,700 gap into curable vacancy ($16,800) and sticky loss-to-lease ($3,900), the five places rent rolls mislead, the GRM that reads 8.2 on potential rent and 12.1 on collected, and the estoppel-and-bank-deposit check that turns the seller's claim into proof before you wire a dime.
11 min readInvestment property appraisals: how they work — and what to do when the value comes in low (2026)
The one number in every financed deal the investor doesn't control. Which forms get ordered (1004, 1025, and the 1007 rent schedule), how the lower-of rule turns a $228K appraisal on a $240K contract into a $9,000 cash call, why a 1007 rent opinion can push a DSCR loan from 1.26 to 1.17 and across a pricing tier, and the five-step playbook when the value misses — renegotiate, gap, reconsideration of value, new lender, walk.
11 min readHow to estimate rent on a rental property (2026)
Rent is the input every metric leans on — and the one investors most often guess. The appraiser's comp-adjustment method with a worked grid, the GRM and 1% cross-checks that bound the number, the haircut from market to effective rent, and why an 8% ($150/month) rent miss moves the cap rate 0.6 points, swings cash flow ~$128/month, and pushes DSCR from 1.15 to 1.24 — across the lender's line.
11 min readBuying a rental property with tenants in place: the lease, the estoppel, and the below-market rent math (2026)
Tenant-occupied listings look like day-one income — but the lease survives the sale in all fifty states, and the rent it carries is usually below market. What legally transfers with the deed, worked loss-to-lease math on a $250K duplex ($43 vs $313/mo cash flow on the same building), the 18-month turnover-payback test, the three documents that protect you (leases, ledger, estoppels), closing-day deposit mechanics, and the staged path to market rent.
11 min readCalculators for this
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