Spot Check Tools

Real Estate

Calculators for real estate investors and small landlords, covering rent vs buy, cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and rental property depreciation schedules.

About these tools

Real estate investment math is straightforward once you know which formula belongs in which decision. The cluster here focuses on the investor side rather than the consumer-mortgage side, because mortgage calculators are already one of the most saturated niches on the web and the investor math gets much less coverage. Cap rate, cash-on-cash return, rental depreciation, and rent-versus-buy are the four calculations a small landlord or a first-time investor hits repeatedly, and each has a clean formula with named conventions behind it.

Every tool here cites the underlying source. Rental depreciation uses IRS Publication 527 and the MACRS 27.5-year straight-line method for residential rental property. Cap rate and NOI follow standard commercial real estate conventions documented by the Appraisal Institute and widely used in broker offering memoranda. Cash-on-cash return is a basic investor formula, not a regulatory one, and the tool calls that out. Rent vs buy is a present-value comparison using typical maintenance, tax, and appreciation defaults that can be overridden for a specific market.

These tools are references, not financial advice. A real investment decision involves market comparables, financing terms, tax brackets, and local regulations that a web calculator cannot fully capture. For a specific investment, work with a broker, a CPA, and a real estate attorney. What these tools are good for: quickly filtering whether a listing makes sense to pursue, sanity-checking a broker's pro forma, or projecting a tax year's depreciation deduction for budgeting.

All calculations run in your browser. Income figures, purchase prices, and ownership details never leave your device and are not stored. No signup, no email gate. Full data-handling detail is on the privacy policy page.

Cross-cluster tools that matter here: the quarterly estimated taxes calculator in the freelance cluster covers self-employment tax for investors who are also self-employed. For W-2 investors, the withholding estimator is the comparable take-home tool.

If a calculator you need is missing, send the scenario and the formula source via the contact page. Tools grounded in IRS publications or standard investor conventions get prioritized.