Rent roll guides for analysts, lenders and property managers

What a rent roll is, how it differs from an operating statement, and how apartment and commercial rolls differ.

• What is a rent roll. The fields on a rent roll, who prepares it and who relies on it.
• Rent roll vs T-12. A snapshot of leases set against twelve months of cash.
• Multifamily vs commercial rent rolls. Unit-level against suite-level rolls, and the CAM and NNN columns.

From potential rent to NOI and DSCR, and the vacancy and rollover measures that sit beside them.

• Gross potential vs actual rent. How loss to lease, vacancy and concessions bridge potential rent to actual rent.
• Physical vs economic vacancy. Empty units against rent not collected, and how to compute each from the roll.
• NOI from a rent roll. Gross potential rent to effective gross income to NOI, with a worked table.
• DSCR from a rent roll. Debt service coverage from rent roll income, with commonly cited lender minimums.
• Lease expiration schedule. Building the rollover table from lease dates, with a worked example.

What to question before relying on a rent roll, and what a lender expects when it asks for a certified one.

• Rent roll red flags. Concessions, below-market leases, related-party tenants and month-to-month leases.
• Certified rent roll. What a certification states, who signs it and when lenders ask for one.

Reading a property management report, and loading a rent roll into an underwriting model.

• Yardi rent roll report explained. Typical columns, subtotals and totals rows on a Yardi rent roll, and their quirks.
• Rent roll to underwriting model. Mapping rent roll columns into an Excel or ARGUS-style model.

The guides describe common practice for people who read rent rolls for a living. They are general information, not investment, lending, legal or tax advice, and the figures in worked examples are invented. Thresholds, definitions and documents differ by lender, program and jurisdiction, so check the term sheet and the loan documents for the deal in front of you.

When you hold a rent roll as a PDF, RentRoll Engine turns it into a CSV and checks the rows against the totals printed on the page. There are also pages for Yardi, RealPage and AppFolio layouts, a rent roll template, and pricing. Free: 1 file per day, up to 10 pages, no account. Files over 10 pages are converted up to page 10 on the free allowance; a page code converts the whole file, up to 150 pages.