Property Investment Analyzer 2.0
Advanced property analysis tool with sensitivity testing, multi-property comparison, and detailed financial projections.
One Property, Every Angle - Before You Write the Offer
Most rental deals are analyzed once, optimistically, on the back of a listing sheet. This analyzer is built for the opposite habit: interrogating a deal until you know exactly what has to go right for it to work. It computes the core return metrics - cash-on-cash return, cap rate, monthly cash flow, NOI, and a 1% rule check - then rolls them into a single 0-100 investment score and projects value, equity, and total return five years out at your chosen appreciation rate.
Two extra tabs separate this tool from a basic calculator. The comparison tab lets you line up several candidate properties and rank them on identical assumptions. The sensitivity tab stress-tests a single deal by sweeping rent, expenses, purchase price, or appreciation across a range - showing you where the deal bends and where it breaks.
Property Details
Include mortgage, insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc.
Investment Analysis
Key Metrics
Enter property details to see investment analysis
Walking Through a Real Analysis
Consider a $300,000 duplex bought with $60,000 down (20%). It rents for $2,600 a month total, against $2,000 in monthly expenses including the mortgage. Cash flow is $600 a month - $7,200 a year - which produces a 12% cash-on-cash return on the $60,000 invested. The 1% rule benchmark is $3,000, so at $2,600 the property falls short of both the rule and the near-miss band, costing it those points. The result: an investment score of 70, squarely in "good investment" territory - strong leveraged cash flow, average income-to-price ratio.
The five-year view adds the second engine of return. At 3% appreciation the duplex grows about $9,000 in value per year, reaching roughly $345,000. Add five years of cash flow ($36,000) to the $45,000 of appreciation and the projected total return is $81,000 - a five-year ROI of 135% on the original $60,000. Then open the sensitivity tab: if rent slips to $2,300, annual cash flow falls to $3,600 and the score drops sharply. Knowing that threshold before closing tells you exactly how much vacancy or concession risk the deal can absorb.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the 0-100 investment score calculated?
The score weights five factors: cash-on-cash return (up to 25 points, with 10%+ earning the maximum), cap rate (up to 25 points, maxing out at 8%+), positive monthly cash flow (20 points), passing or nearly passing the 1% rule (up to 15 points), and positive net operating income (15 points). Scores of 80+ read as excellent, 60-79 good, 40-59 fair, and below 40 poor. It is a screening grade, not a verdict - a 65 in a great school district can beat a 75 next to a highway.
What appreciation rate should I use in the projections?
The default of 3% per year roughly tracks long-run US home price growth and is a sensible conservative baseline. Resist plugging in the 8-10% some markets posted in boom years; five-year projections compound small differences into large ones. A useful discipline is to underwrite the deal so it works at 0-3% appreciation, and treat anything above that as upside rather than the reason to buy.
What does the sensitivity analysis tab actually test?
It varies one input at a time - rent, expenses, appreciation, or purchase price - and shows how your returns respond across a range of values. This exposes which assumption your deal is most fragile to. If a $100 drop in rent flips the property to negative cash flow, you have no margin of safety; if returns stay acceptable across the whole tested range, the deal is robust to normal market noise.
How should I use the multi-property comparison?
Enter each candidate property with its own price, down payment, rent, and expenses, then compare scores and metrics side by side. The discipline of filling in real numbers for every candidate matters as much as the output - it forces apples-to-apples assumptions. Watch for the common pattern where the cheapest property posts the best cash-on-cash return but the worst neighborhood risk; the numbers frame the decision, they do not make it.