How we calculate your numbers
Every formula on this page is the one the app actually runs. A test recomputes each metric from the formula printed here and compares it against the shipping code — if they ever disagree, the build fails.
RentSight builds your income, expenses, and cash flow from one place: the transactions you record. The asking rent and estimated costs on a property are used to pre-fill forms and to seed starting estimates — they are never quietly substituted for a number you did not record.
The rules below explain the handful of cases where a figure will not match what you might work out on the back of an envelope, and why.
How the money is counted
The rent and costs on a property are starting points, not results
The asking rent on a unit, and the annual taxes, insurance, and mortgage payment on a property, are used to pre-fill forms and to seed estimates. They are not what your reported income and expenses are built from.
Everything on the Dashboard, Financials, and Accounting comes from your transactions. If a number looks low, the question is which transactions are missing — not which property field is wrong.
Projections and Acquisition analysis are the exception, and necessarily so: a hypothetical future has no transactions to read.
Recording a real amount replaces the estimate for that month
When you add a property, RentSight seeds estimated transactions from the rent and costs you entered, so your numbers are not empty on day one.
The moment you record a real transaction, the estimate for that category and that month is dropped. It is a replacement, not an addition — recording rent never double-counts against the estimate.
This works at month granularity. A partial payment still replaces the whole month's estimate rather than topping it up, so a month where you collected half the rent shows half the rent, not the estimate.
Estimated transactions are marked, and stop being estimates once you edit them
Estimates are real rows you can see and edit in Accounting, flagged as estimated.
Editing one converts it to an actual, and RentSight will never overwrite it again — later changes to the property's asking rent or annual costs leave it alone.
Changing a property's money fields end-dates the current estimate and starts a new one from tomorrow, so history is preserved rather than rewritten.
Recurring costs are spread evenly, not dropped on one month
A $6,000 annual insurance premium is counted as $500 in every month it covers, not as $6,000 in the month you paid it. The same applies to quarterly costs and to annual property taxes.
This is why your monthly cash flow does not spike in the month a big bill lands. It reflects what the property costs to hold, month over month, rather than the timing of when money left your account.
The Accounting profit-and-loss statement and the T776 tax summary do the opposite on purpose: those use real payment dates, because that is what a filing has to reflect.
Vacancy is measured from lease history, not from the occupancy toggle
A gap between one lease ending and the next beginning is a vacancy, priced at the rent that was actually in effect at the time — the archived lease's rent for past periods, and the unit's current asking rent only for the stretch after the most recent lease ended.
Overlapping leases are clipped so no day is counted twice.
Vacancy uses real calendar months. A unit empty for all of February counts as one full month of lost rent, not 28/30ths of one.
Annual rates are scaled from the period you selected
Cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and debt coverage are annual figures. When your selected period is shorter than a year, the period's result is scaled up to a full year before the ratio is taken.
A short period therefore amplifies whatever happened in it. Three months containing one large repair will show a worse annualized return than the year actually delivered.
Portfolio-level transactions count only when nothing is filtered out
A transaction with no property attached belongs to the portfolio as a whole.
While you are viewing everything, those are included. The moment you filter to a subset of properties, they drop out — there is no defensible way to attribute a portfolio-wide cost to some properties and not others.
Mortgage interest compounds the way your property's jurisdiction does
Canadian mortgages compound twice a year, as the Interest Act requires, so a stated 5% costs 5.0625% over a year. American mortgages compound monthly, and a stated 5% costs 5%.
RentSight reads each property's province or state and applies the matching convention everywhere that property's mortgage appears — projections, refinancing, and the debt-cost figures on Financials. The same stated rate therefore produces a slightly lower monthly payment on a Canadian property than on an American one.
Acquisition scenarios are the exception, because a deal you have not closed has no jurisdiction to read yet. Those use the semi-annual convention until the property exists.
Two figures stay semi-annual regardless of where a property sits: the effective and real interest rates on Financials, which report a Canadian effective-rate calculation, and the mortgage interest in the CCA schedule, which is a CRA filing artifact.
Tax summaries ignore estimates entirely
The T776 summary counts only transactions you actually recorded. Estimated rows are excluded outright, because a filing has to reflect real money.
This is why the tax summary can be lower than the Financials tab for the same year.
From your transactions
Every one of these is built from the income and expenses you recorded, over the period you selected. None of them read the asking rent or estimated costs on a property.
Gross Income
Also shown as: Rental Income, Monthly Income, Total Income
Gross Income is every dollar of income recorded against your properties in the selected period — rent, late fees, and anything else you categorized as income.
Rent + Late Fees + Other IncomeOperating Expenses
Operating Expenses is what it costs to run the properties — taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance, utilities, management, legal, and advertising. Mortgage payments are deliberately excluded.
Total Expenses − Mortgage PaymentsMortgage Payments
Also shown as: Debt Service
Mortgage Payments is the mortgage principal and interest recorded in the period. It sits below the NOI line because it reflects how you financed the property, not how the property performs.
Mortgage PaymentsTotal Expenses
Also shown as: Monthly Expenses
Total Expenses is every expense recorded in the period, including mortgage payments.
Operating Expenses + Mortgage PaymentsNet Operating Income
Also shown as: NOI, NOI (Last 12 Months)
Net Operating Income is your rental income minus the cost of operating the properties, before any mortgage payments. It measures how the property performs independently of how you financed it — which is why two owners of the same building have the same NOI but different cash flow.
Gross Income − Operating ExpensesNet Cash Flow
Also shown as: Monthly Cash Flow, Net Cash Flow /mo
Net Cash Flow is what is left after every expense including the mortgage — the money that actually reaches you.
Net Operating Income − Mortgage PaymentsCap Rate
Also shown as: Capitalization Rate
Cap Rate is the annual return the property would produce if you owned it outright, with no mortgage. Because it ignores financing, it is the standard way to compare one property against another. Typical range is 4–10%.
(Annualized Net Operating Income ÷ Current Value) × 100When this shows N/A: Add a current value to your properties to see this.
Cash on Cash Return
Cash on Cash Return is your annual cash flow measured against the cash you have tied up in the property. Unlike cap rate it does account for the mortgage, so it answers 'what is my money earning?' rather than 'what is the building earning?'. 8–12% is generally considered good.
(Annualized Net Cash Flow ÷ Cash Invested) × 100When this shows N/A: Add a purchase price to your properties to see this.
Debt Coverage Ratio
Also shown as: DCR, DSCR
Debt Coverage Ratio is how many times over your operating income covers the mortgage. Above 1.0 means the property pays its own debt; below 1.0 means you are funding it from elsewhere. Lenders typically want 1.2 or higher.
Annualized Net Operating Income ÷ Annualized Mortgage PaymentsWhen this shows N/A: No mortgage payments recorded in this period.
Operating Expense Ratio
Operating Expense Ratio is the share of your rental income consumed by operating costs. Lower is better; well-run residential property often lands between 35% and 50%.
(Operating Expenses ÷ Gross Income) × 100When this shows N/A: No income recorded in this period.
Potential Rent
Potential Rent is what every unit would have brought in over the period if none of them had sat empty, priced at the rent in effect at the time.
Potential RentVacancy Loss
Vacancy Loss is the rent you did not collect because a unit sat empty, measured from the gaps in your lease history rather than from the occupancy toggle.
Vacancy LossEconomic Occupancy
Also shown as: Occupancy Rate
Economic Occupancy is the share of collectable rent you actually realized over the period. It is rent-weighted and time-weighted, so an expensive unit empty for a month costs you more than a cheap one. This is a different number from Physical Occupancy, which just counts doors.
((Potential Rent − Vacancy Loss) ÷ Potential Rent) × 100When this shows N/A: No rentable units, so there is no occupancy to measure.
From your property details
These come from figures you entered — purchase price, current value, mortgage balance — because there is no transaction that represents what a building is worth.
Total Assets
Also shown as: Portfolio Assets, Current Value
Total Assets is the current market value you have recorded across every property. RentSight does not estimate this — it is the figure you entered.
Current ValueTotal Debt
Also shown as: Mortgage Balance
Total Debt is the mortgage principal still outstanding across every property.
Mortgage BalanceTotal Equity
Also shown as: Portfolio Equity, Equity
Total Equity is the part of your portfolio's value you own outright.
Current Value − Mortgage BalanceEquity Position
Also shown as: Equity %
Equity Position is how much of your portfolio's value is yours rather than the lender's. A higher figure means less leverage — steadier, but with less of the amplification that borrowing provides.
(Total Equity ÷ Current Value) × 100When this shows N/A: Add a current value to your properties to see this.
Appreciation
Appreciation is how much your recorded value has grown over what you paid. It moves only when you update a property's current value — RentSight has no market feed.
((Current Value − Purchase Price) ÷ Purchase Price) × 100When this shows N/A: Add both a purchase price and a current value to see this.
Cash Invested
Cash Invested approximates what you have tied up in the portfolio, as purchase price less what is still owed. It is a proxy for your equity stake at cost, not a record of the cash that actually left your account — down payments, closing costs, and renovations are not tracked separately.
Purchase Price − Mortgage BalanceWhen this shows N/A: Add a purchase price to your properties to see this.
Physical Occupancy
Physical Occupancy is how many of your units have a tenant in them right now. It is a snapshot of the roster, not a measure of return — a unit that was empty for eleven months and filled yesterday counts as fully occupied here. For the money question, see Economic Occupancy.
(Occupied Units ÷ Total Units) × 100When this shows N/A: No rentable units, so there is no occupancy to measure.
What your debt costs
Computed from your mortgage balances, rates, and payments. These are the figures most sensitive to the compounding convention.
Weighted Avg. Interest Rate
Also shown as: Nominal Rate
Weighted Avg. Interest Rate is the average of the rates on your paperwork, weighted by how much you owe on each mortgage — so your largest loan moves it most. It is the figure before compounding, tax deductibility, and inflation are accounted for.
Weighted Avg. Interest RateWhen this shows N/A: No property has both a mortgage balance and an interest rate.
Effective Interest Rate
Effective Interest Rate is what your mortgages actually cost per year once semi-annual compounding is applied, weighted by how much you owe on each. It runs slightly above the rate on your paperwork — a stated 5% is an effective 5.0625%.
Effective Interest RateWhen this shows N/A: No property has both a mortgage balance and an interest rate.
After-Tax Interest Rate
Also shown as: After-Tax Rate
After-Tax Interest Rate is your borrowing cost after the deduction, since mortgage interest on a rental property is a deductible expense. At a 40% marginal rate, 5% of interest costs you 3%.
Effective Interest Rate × (1 − Marginal Tax Rate)When this shows N/A: Set your marginal tax rate to see this.
Real Cost of Borrowing
Also shown as: Real Rate
Real Cost of Borrowing is your after-tax borrowing cost with inflation subtracted. When it is negative, inflation is eroding the debt faster than it accrues — you are being paid, in real terms, to hold the mortgage.
After-Tax Interest Rate − Inflation RateWhen this shows N/A: Set your marginal tax rate to see this.
Annual Tax Savings
Annual Tax Savings is what deducting your mortgage interest is worth this year at your marginal rate.
Total Annual Interest × Marginal Tax RateWhen this shows N/A: Set your marginal tax rate to see this.
Something look wrong?
If a number here does not match what you expect, the fastest check is usually the Accounting tab: it lists every transaction feeding the period, including the estimated ones, so you can see exactly what was counted.
Still not adding up? Tell us — a number you cannot reconcile is a bug in this page, in the app, or in both, and we would like to know which.
25 metrics documented. This page is generated from the same registry the app reads at runtime.