We built this calculator for two primary reasons. First, when you have a vacancy, you want to price your rental correctly from the beginning. And if the rental is on the market for too long, your listing will drop down on the advertising websites and be seen by fewer tenants. Therefore, it’s important to determine a good, accurate initial rental rate. And, if you find that demand is not high enough, in other words, you have no tenant inquiries, then we recommend adjusting the rental rate.

Second, when a tenant’s lease is up for renewal, you want to know what is a fair increase in the rental rate. You may not want to raise it to market rate, especially if you have great tenants, but you may want to set an expectation that rent will increase every year to account for some inflation. To make sure the tenant understands why you’re raising rent, and to confirm it’s still below market rate, this calculator is a good objective rent estimate to share with your tenants. Then, you can sleep at night knowing the tenant will gladly sign your lease renewal document, knowing they’re getting a good deal compared to market rate.

As with any calculator that pulls market data, it’s only as good as the data is. We checked multiple data sources and found this one to be the most comprehensive and accurate for providing rental estimates. We even spot checked the data against a large number of rentals using our property management solution.

However, it does not mean that this tool is always accurate. There are various reason that the rent calculator may be off, such as:

1. Your rental is new or has recently been renovated compared to your neighbors: If you have certain aesthetics that make your rental more valuable than other properties in the neighborhood, those are often not included in the estimate.
2. Zoning laws may not be accounted for: If your rental is in an area where one street is drastically different from the neighboring street, then the estimate may be inaccurate.
3. Your neighborhood has few rentals on the market: If your area has not listed a lot of rentals (at least 3 to 4 of similar size to yours) on market over the past few months, then we will have less data to use in the analysis.

Want to confirm how accurate the report is? Simply click the button to view the full report. Once that is emailed to you, the second half of the report will show the rental “comps” in your area. You can look at these properties to see how close they are to your own rental. From the address to the amenities, you can get a pretty good idea on how accurate this sample list of rentals used will be.

The best way to interpret the results is to download the full report. Then, you can view the rental comps for your area and see what data is driving the decision on the rental rate. However, if you find that you want to cross check the data further, use this free rent estimate worksheet to take rental comps that you think are most accurate to come up with your own rent estimate.

If you are using this calculator and still are not getting tenants for your rental property, then you may want to consider other ways to spruce up your rental listing. Being a landlord should not be emotional so make sure to leverage this data to justify your rental rates and make slight changes as appropriate.

Thanks for using our free tools and we look forward to supporting your property management in any way that we can.