Work a rent check down to effective gross income, net operating income, and monthly cash flow, and see the slice of rent a lender will actually count.
Rental income is gross rent minus vacancy minus operating expenses, and the SealedFolio rental income calculator on this page shows every step of that subtraction. Rent of $2,500 a month is $30,000 of gross scheduled income. A 5% vacancy allowance leaves $28,500 of effective gross income. Take out $11,100 of operating expenses, taxes $4,000, insurance $1,500, maintenance $2,000, management $2,400 and a $1,200 capital reserve, and net operating income is $17,400. Subtract a $14,000 annual mortgage and cash flow is $3,400 a year, about $283 a month.
A mortgage lender counts a narrower number than that. With no filed tax return on the property yet, agency underwriting commonly credits 75% of the gross rent on a signed lease or an appraiser's comparable rent schedule, holding the other 25% back for vacancy and maintenance. On $2,500 of rent that is $1,875 a month, and the lender view in the results panel updates it as you type. Once the property has been on a return, the underwriter switches to your filed Schedule E, which the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator works through line by line.
The SealedFolio rental income calculator is free, asks for no account or email, and sends nothing to a server, so your rent and expense figures never leave the tab.
Estimate only, runs entirely in your browser. SealedFolio tracks real income and expenses per property automatically. See how.
What an underwriter typically credits from a signed lease when the property has no filing history yet. SealedFolio shows it beside the cash result so both numbers come from one set of entries.
Rental income is more than the rent check, and the SealedFolio rental income calculator above runs these four steps in order. To know what a property really earns, work down from gross to cash flow:
For return metrics on top of income, use the SealedFolio cap rate and cash-on-cash return calculators, or the rental ROI calculator if you want appreciation and equity paydown counted too. To see what actually lands in your account after the mortgage and expenses, run the rental property cash flow calculator. For taxes, the Schedule E calculator.
Every field in the SealedFolio rental income calculator maps to one line of a real operating statement. Here is what belongs in each one.
Monthly rent. The rent on the signed lease, not the number in the listing. If a unit is vacant, use what a comparable unit down the street actually rents for today.
Other monthly income. Parking, laundry, storage, pet rent, and paid amenities. On small multifamily this is often the difference between a deal that clears and one that does not, and most people forget it entirely.
Vacancy rate. The share of a year you assume the unit earns nothing. Five percent is about two and a half weeks. Set this before you fall in love with a property, not after.
Operating expenses. Everything it costs to run the building whether or not there is a loan on it: property taxes, insurance, repairs and maintenance, management fees, HOA dues, and any utilities the landlord covers. A capital reserve belongs here too, because the roof is going to need replacing on a schedule nobody controls.
Annual mortgage payment. Principal and interest only. If taxes and insurance are escrowed into your payment, do not enter them twice. Need the payment figure first? Run the rental property mortgage calculator.
Effective gross income. Gross income after the vacancy haircut. This is the honest top line.
Operating expense ratio. Operating expenses divided by effective gross income. Treat it as a sanity check on your own inputs rather than a score.
Net operating income. Effective gross income minus operating expenses, before any financing. NOI is the number cap rate is built on, and it is why two investors can look at the same building and disagree about the price.
Cash flow. NOI minus the mortgage. Pre-tax, and not the same as taxable income.
This is the default scenario in the SealedFolio rental income calculator written out, so you can see where the money goes at each step.
The operating expense ratio here is 39%, which is inside the normal band. Notice how much distance sits between the $30,000 headline and the $3,400 that actually reaches you. That gap is the whole reason to run the numbers before you make an offer.
Now change one thing. Push vacancy from 5% to 10% and cash flow drops to $1,900 a year. One extra vacant month is most of your profit on a property like this, which is why the vacancy input deserves more thought than it usually gets.
If you are analyzing a property you do not own yet, four of the expense lines in the SealedFolio rental income calculator are guesses. Common planning ranges, used as starting points and replaced with real quotes as soon as you have them:
Property taxes and insurance are the two you never have to guess at. Pull the tax bill from the county assessor and get a real insurance quote for the address. Both can swing a deal by more than every assumption above combined, and both take about ten minutes to verify. If this is your first purchase, the SealedFolio guide to buying a first rental property covers which of these numbers to nail down before you make an offer.
A lender credits less rental income than the lease shows, and the SealedFolio rental income calculator prints that narrower figure in the lender view above. For a property with no filing history, the common convention is to count 75% of the gross rent from a signed lease or an appraiser's comparable rent schedule. The other 25% is held back for vacancy and maintenance. On a $2,500 lease that is $1,875 a month, or $22,500 a year. It is a screen, not a promise, and programs differ, so treat it as the conversation starter with your loan officer rather than a commitment.
Once the property has been on a tax return, the method changes. Underwriters work from your filed Schedule E and add back the items that never cost you cash or that they count elsewhere, depreciation being the big one. That path is worked through in detail on the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator, including the add-back view.
If you are qualifying on the property rather than on your own income, the ratio that matters is NOI against the mortgage payment. The SealedFolio mortgage calculator covers how DSCR lending works and what coverage level is typically required.
Search for a rental income calculator or a Schedule E income calculator and most of the first page is underwriting tooling rather than landlord tooling. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each publish a hosted income calculator aimed at lenders, and mortgage insurers including Enact, Essent, Arch and MGIC republish the same agency worksheets as free spreadsheets for loan officers. Every one of them answers a single question: how much of this borrower's rent can be counted toward a loan. The SealedFolio rental income calculator on this page answers the other one, which is what the property actually earns you.
Which worksheet applies to your file comes down to one fact, whether the property has appeared on a filed tax return yet.
FHA files run on a shorter add-back list than the agency worksheets use, and an underwriter can ask for more documentation than either route assumes. Confirm the method with your loan officer before you plan around a number. Neither worksheet changes what the property earns, which is what the waterfall above is for.
The SealedFolio rental income calculator stops at what a property earns, and the question people ask right after is what it takes to borrow against one. On a $200,000 loan at 6.5% over 30 years, principal and interest run about $1,264 a month. Add $4,000 of annual property tax and $1,500 of insurance, about $458 a month, and the full payment is roughly $1,722. Lenders commonly cap total debt near 43% of gross monthly income, so with no other debt payments in the picture that payment needs about $4,005 a month, close to $48,000 a year. The rate does most of the moving here: at 7.5% the same loan costs about $1,398 a month in principal and interest, and the income needed climbs with it.
Rental income can carry part of that. A $2,500 lease credited at the 75% convention is $1,875 a month of qualifying income, which covers the $1,722 payment on its own before a dollar of salary is counted. That is the whole reason the lender view sits beside the cash flow result in the SealedFolio calculator above rather than on a separate page.
Those figures are arithmetic on stated assumptions, not an approval. Car loans, student loans and credit card minimums all eat into the same 43%, reserve requirements vary by program, and a departing residence gets its own treatment. Run your own payment through the SealedFolio rental property mortgage calculator, then take both numbers to a loan officer.
Schedule E line 3 takes gross rents received, so it includes rent for the year plus advance rent, late fees, pet rent, lease cancellation payments, expenses a tenant paid on your behalf, and the value of any service accepted in place of rent. Security deposits are the exception people trip on. A deposit you plan to return is not income, and a deposit you keep for damage or unpaid rent becomes income in the year you keep it. Expenses come off separately on lines 5 through 19, so nothing is netted before it reaches line 3. The SealedFolio rental income calculator on this page works in cash terms instead, which is a different figure from the one your return reports.
Cash flow and taxable income rarely match, and the reason is usually depreciation. Your mortgage principal is cash out the door but is not deductible. Depreciation is deductible but costs you nothing this year. Take the $2,500 property above, which nets $3,400 of cash a year. Depreciation on a $220,000 building runs $8,000 a year over the 27.5 year residential schedule, which is on its own enough to turn that property into a paper loss while your account still grows. The capital reserve in the calculator is another gap, since money you set aside for a future roof is not deductible until you spend it.
For the filing view, the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator maps each entry to its form line, and the SealedFolio line by line Schedule E guide for 2026 explains what belongs on each one. The depreciation calculator gives you the year by year figure on a 27.5 year schedule, and the guide to rental property tax deductions covers what else you can claim against this income.
Common questions about the SealedFolio rental income calculator and the numbers it produces.
Start with gross scheduled rent, meaning monthly rent times 12 plus any other income like parking or laundry. Subtract a vacancy allowance to get effective gross income, then subtract operating expenses to get net operating income, and finally subtract the mortgage to get your pre-tax cash flow.
Gross rental income is all the rent and other income a property collects. Net rental income, usually called net operating income, is what remains after vacancy and operating expenses but before financing. Lenders and the IRS care about different versions, so this calculator shows each step separately.
No. Net operating income stops before the mortgage, which is what makes it comparable across properties with different financing. Cash flow is what is left after the mortgage payment comes out of net operating income. Two identical buildings can share an NOI and have very different cash flow.
For a property with no filing history, agency underwriting commonly counts 75% of the gross rent shown on a signed lease or an appraiser's comparable rent schedule, with the remaining 25% held back for vacancy and maintenance. If the property is already on your tax return, the lender works from your Schedule E instead and adds back items like depreciation. Programs vary, so confirm the method with your lender.
On a $200,000 loan at 6.5% over 30 years, principal and interest run about $1,264 a month. Add $4,000 of annual property tax and $1,500 of insurance, about $458 a month, and the full payment is roughly $1,722. Lenders commonly cap total debt near 43% of gross monthly income, so with no other debt payments in the picture that payment needs about $4,005 a month, close to $48,000 a year. Rental income can carry part of it, because a $2,500 lease credited at the 75% convention is $1,875 a month. Rates, debt ratio limits and reserve requirements vary by program, so confirm the numbers with your loan officer.
Five to eight percent is the common planning range for a stable long term rental, which is roughly two to four weeks of turnover per year. Use the higher end for student housing, seasonal markets, or a unit you expect to turn every year, and the lower end only if you have real leasing history to back it up.
Operating expenses divided by effective gross income is a quick sanity check on your inputs. Most residential rentals land somewhere between 35% and 45% once taxes, insurance, maintenance, management, and reserves are all in. A ratio far under that usually means you left something out rather than that you found a bargain.
Schedule E line 3 takes gross rents received, so it includes rent for the year plus advance rent, late fees, pet rent, lease cancellation payments, expenses a tenant paid on your behalf, and the value of any service accepted in place of rent. Security deposits are the exception people trip on. A deposit you plan to return is not income, and a deposit you keep for damage or unpaid rent becomes income in the year you keep it. Expenses come off separately on lines 5 through 19, so nothing is netted before it reaches line 3. This page works in cash terms, so use the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator for the filing view.
Rental Cash Flow Calculator
Monthly cash flow with the 1% and 50% screening rules
ToolRental ROI Calculator
Total return with appreciation and equity paydown
ToolSchedule E Calculator
Taxable rental income and the lender add-back view
Tracking a portfolio instead of screening one deal? SealedFolio keeps income and expenses per property on your own machine, so these figures come from real numbers rather than estimates. The rest of the free set is in the calculator library.