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What Is a Rent Roll?

A rent roll is a document that lists every unit in a rental property, the tenant occupying it, the lease terms, and the rent being collected, all as of a specific date. It's the primary source document for understanding what a property is actually earning and how stable that income is.

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What a Rent Roll Actually Shows

A rent roll organizes into three groups of information.

Unit and tenant identifiers. Unit number, tenant name, and square footage. On a multifamily property this is straightforward. On a commercial property it may also include tenant type (retail, office, industrial) since that affects lease structure.

Lease terms. Lease start and end dates, renewal or termination options, and any rent escalations (a flat annual increase like 3%, for example). This is what tells you how the income behaves over time, not just what it looks like today.

Financials and occupancy. Current rent, market rent if different, security deposit held, any concessions given, and whether the unit is occupied, vacant, or on notice.

Some rent rolls also show past-due balances and payment history, though that's more common on the property management side than the underwriting side.

Example Rent Roll

Four tenants, four different lease terms and escalation schedules. Multiply that across a fifty-unit multifamily deal or a mixed-use property with a dozen commercial tenants, and you can see why a messy or inconsistent rent roll becomes a real underwriting problem fast.

Why Rent Rolls Matter in Underwriting

A rent roll isn't just a record, it's an input. Reading one well means checking a handful of specific things beyond the raw rent numbers.

Lease vs. month-to-month. Some units on a rent roll won't have a fixed lease term at all. A tenant on a month-to-month tenancy can typically leave with 30 days' notice, so a rent roll with a high share of MTM tenants carries more near-term vacancy risk than one where most tenants are locked into multi-year leases, even at the same total rent.

Vacancy rate. Total vacant units or square footage divided by the total in the rent roll. This is the physical vacancy rate, and it's different from economic vacancy (loss from concessions, non-payment, or below-market rents on occupied units). A rent roll only gives you the physical number directly, so don't confuse the two.

Effective rent vs. market rent vs. contract rent. Three different numbers that often get mixed up. Contract rent is what the lease says the tenant pays. Market rent is what a comparable unit would rent for today. Effective rent is contract rent after subtracting the value of any concessions, like a free month on a 12-month lease. Comparing contract rent to market rent tells you about upside potential. Comparing contract rent to effective rent tells you whether the rent roll is overstating actual income.

Tenant concentration. Ranking tenants by share of total rent (not just by square footage) shows how exposed the property is to a single tenant leaving. A rent roll where one tenant represents 40% of income is a different risk profile than one where the largest tenant is 8%, even if total rent is identical. This matters more on commercial and mixed-use rent rolls than on typical multifamily, where individual units are usually a small share of the total.

Is the income stable overall? Lease expiration dates tell you how much of the rent roll turns over in the next 12 to 24 months. A property with several leases expiring in the same window carries more rollover risk than one with staggered terms, even if both show the same rent today.

Is there upside? Comparing current rent to market rent across the whole rent roll shows loss to lease, meaning rent that's being left on the table under existing leases. That gap is often the whole thesis behind a value-add deal.

For more on how this connects downstream, see what NOI is and how it's calculated and how a rent roll turns into pro forma rent.

Rent Roll vs. Other Documents

Rent roll vs. T12. A rent roll shows lease-level detail, unit by unit, as of one date. A T12 shows the property's income and expenses over the trailing twelve months. They answer different questions: the rent roll tells you what the leases say, the T12 tells you what actually got collected and spent. See what a T12 is for the full breakdown.

Rent roll vs. tenant ledger. A rent roll is a snapshot across every unit at one point in time. A tenant ledger is a running transaction history for a single tenant, showing every charge and payment over the life of the lease. If you need to know what a property looks like today, use the rent roll. If you need to know whether one specific tenant has a history of paying late, that's the ledger.

Common Rent Roll Problems

Rent rolls come out of whatever property management software the owner or manager happens to use, and that software doesn't export in a consistent format. A few problems show up often enough to watch for specifically:

• Inconsistent unit labeling. "Unit 1A" on one row and "101-A" on another, same building.
• Missing or mismatched lease dates. Dates that don't match the actual lease agreement, which makes rollover risk hard to calculate accurately.
• Occupied units with no rent listed. Usually a free-rent period or a data entry gap, but it needs to be investigated, not assumed.
• Non-standardized layouts. Merged cells, subtotals mixed into the tenant list, unit types spelled differently row to row. This is the single biggest source of manual reformatting time when you're underwriting several deals a month.

How to Read a Rent Roll, in Brief

Reading a rent roll well means checking lease expirations for concentration risk, comparing current rent to market rent for upside, and confirming occupancy status matches what the seller is telling you. For the full walkthrough, line by line, see how to read a rent roll.

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