About this Rent vs Sell Calculator
A rent-versus-sell decision compares rental cash flow and future property value against selling now and reinvesting the net proceeds.
Who this calculator is for
- Real estate investors, landlords, and operators comparing property-level operating assumptions.
- Short-term rental hosts, property managers, and finance teams building transparent scenario checks.
- Owners deciding whether rent, sell, self-manage, or outsource operations using their own local numbers.
When to use it
- Estimate operating cost, rental profit, occupancy, rent-change impact, or rent-versus-sell tradeoffs.
- Compare conservative, expected, and optimistic property scenarios with formulas you can inspect.
- Document how user-entered rents, fees, expenses, occupancy, appreciation, and sale assumptions affect the result.
How to use this calculator
- Enter your own rent, nightly rate, occupancy, fee, expense, mortgage, appreciation, or sale assumptions.
- Review the primary output first, then use supporting outputs to understand the drivers behind it.
- Run alternate scenarios before using the result in a budget, offer, refinance review, or hold-versus-sell plan.
Key assumptions
- All rents, nightly rates, occupancy, operating expenses, management fees, sale costs, appreciation, and reinvestment returns are user-entered assumptions.
- No platform rates, property management rates, rent caps, tax rates, brokerage fees, or market forecasts are hardcoded.
- Results are deterministic planning estimates and are not investment, legal, tax, accounting, lending, or property-management advice.
- Calculations run locally in the browser without uploading private property, tenant, reservation, financing, or sale data.
Accuracy and testing
Review formula sources, default test cases, assumptions, unit handling, rounding rules, and changelog for this calculator.
How this calculator works
Inputs explained
Rental assumptions
Monthly rent, occupancy rate, operating expenses, management rate, and mortgage cost used to estimate rental cash flow.
Sale assumptions
Current property value, mortgage balance, sale cost rate, expected appreciation, and future loan balance.
Horizon and reinvestment return
How many years to compare and the annual return assumption for investing net sale proceeds elsewhere.
Understanding your results
Example scenarios
Planning example
$425,000 value, $275,000 loan, 5-year horizon, $2,700 rent at 95% occupancy, $900 expenses, 8% management, $1,650 mortgage, 3% appreciation, 7% sale costs, and 5% reinvestment return estimates whether the rent path beats selling now.
Key Features
- Instant Calculation
- Private & Secure
- Mobile Optimized
Things to Keep in Mind
These calculators do not fetch live market rents, property values, platform fees, tax rates, mortgage quotes, rent-control rules, short-term rental regulations, or sale comps. Enter the current assumptions that apply to your property and review important decisions with qualified local professionals.
Tips & Best Practices
- Use recent leases, owner statements, bank records, management proposals, booking reports, and local sale estimates when possible.
- Stress-test vacancy, repairs, operating expenses, sale costs, appreciation, and reinvestment assumptions before making a decision.
- Check local laws, lease terms, lender rules, tax treatment, licensing, and HOA restrictions before relying on a scenario.
Glossary of Terms
- Rent path value
- Projected rental cash flow over the horizon plus net sale proceeds at the end of the horizon.
- Sell-now path value
- Net sale proceeds today compounded by the user-entered reinvestment return assumption.
- Sale costs
- Broker commissions, closing costs, concessions, transfer costs, or other sale expenses you choose to include.