SFR Reality Check
Own rentals? See what your tied-up equity is really earning, in about ten minutes. It feeds line A above.
Open the toolHome/Resources/Commercial Buyer's Cheat Sheet
Free tool · From the podcastNever bought commercial? Start here. See how the equity sitting in your rental becomes your first commercial deal, and why income, not comps, sets the price.
Part two of the Rental Reality Check · From the episode “From Single Family to Starbucks, Comps to Cap Rates”
Prefer paper? Get the printable cheat sheet and keep it next to the deal.
Download the cheat sheet PDFDownloading the cheat sheet now, check your downloads folder.
Commercial value runs on income, not on what the house down the street sold for. Two numbers get you there.
The money the property makes in a year after paying its own bills. Your loan payment doesn't count here, and neither do your income taxes or depreciation.
The market's yield on that income. A broker will tell you the going cap rate for the type of building and the area.
Value is just the income divided by the cap rate. Push the income up and the value goes up with it.
Every $1 of NOI you add (income raised OR expense cut) creates value equal to that dollar divided by the cap rate. Put in what you think you could add and watch what it does.
Prefilled from section 1 if you set it there. Edit it if this deal trades at a different cap rate.
| Market cap rate | $1 of NOI = | $10,000 of NOI = | $50,000 of NOI = |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | $20.00 | $200,000 | $1,000,000 |
| 6% | $16.67 | $166,700 | $833,000 |
| 7% | $14.29 | $142,900 | $714,000 |
Your rental house gets none of this. Houses are priced on comps, not income. This table is the reason to switch games.
Every figure this tool produces is a simplified estimate for education only, based on the numbers you enter. It is not financial, tax, or investment advice. Run real decisions past your own licensed advisors.
You don't need to own commercial yet to run this. It's the yearly difference between what your equity earns stuck in the house and what that same equity would earn in a passive commercial deal. This is the number that gets people to move.
Most people don't, and that's the point of this page. Answer five quick questions and we'll work both out right here.
Free. No email needed to get the numbers.
Own more than one? Use the totals across all of them. We subtract ~7% selling costs (agent + closing) for you.
We knock off ~6% for vacancy automatically.
Taxes, insurance, management, HOA, repairs, maintenance. Your best total.
Principal and interest. Leave at 0 if it's paid off.
Want the deeper version? The Rental Reality Check grades each rental, handles multiple properties, and sends you the full breakdown. Your numbers carry back here automatically.
What they'd sell for minus what you owe (line D of the SFR Reality Check if you have it).
Pulled from your Reality Check, edit if needed.
Real cashflow. What actually landed in your pocket, not the gross rent.
Pulled from your Reality Check, edit if needed.
That number is what staying put costs you, every year, until the equity moves. A free call with Katelyn walks your options with these numbers in hand.
Book a free call with KatelynEnter your email and your number appears here, plus the full cheat sheet in your inbox.
Your numbers are in your inbox.
The five deadline rules, the pro moves, and the bonus depreciation kicker.
"Like-kind" just means any U.S. investment property for any other. A rental house can turn into apartments, retail, a net-lease building (one long-term tenant), or a resort. All of it qualifies.
Pro moves: Find the replacement deal BEFORE you list. Roll several house sales into one bigger property. Selling multiple houses with leftover equity? DSTs also count (you buy a slice of a big building someone else runs). They're for higher-net-worth investors, you can't cash out quickly, and the fees add up, so read the fine print.
The kicker: 100% bonus depreciation is back, permanently, for property bought after 1/19/2025. That's a tax break that lets you deduct a big chunk of the building in year one instead of over decades. Have your CPA order a cost segregation study (an engineer splits the building into parts you can write off faster). It can turn 30–50% of the purchase into a year-one write-off. Order it before you close.
Go deeper: Brett sat down with Michael Velasco, who runs 1031 exchanges for a living, and they cover exchange types most investors have never heard of. Watch the episode.
Check every box before you make an offer. Your progress saves on this device.
Single family thinking vs commercial thinking, side by side. Tape it to your monitor.
| Single family (comps) | Commercial (cap rates) |
|---|---|
| Market controls value | Operator controls value |
| Rent increases barely move price | Income increases ARE price increases |
| You cannot force appreciation | You can force appreciation |
| Effort doesn't guarantee results | Effort creates value |
| "What's the price?" | "What price makes this a good deal?" |
Your equity doesn't know it lives in a house. Move it where effort counts.
Brett Tanner | The Be Wealthy Podcast
Prefer paper? Get the printable cheat sheet and keep it next to the deal.
Download the cheat sheet PDFDownloading the cheat sheet now, check your downloads folder.
Own rentals? See what your tied-up equity is really earning, in about ten minutes. It feeds line A above.
Open the toolSee how money grows once it is invested and left alone. Set a monthly amount, a return, and a goal.
Run your numbersEvery planner, tracker, and worksheet Brett hands out, in one place.
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