LandlordCalculusLandlord Calculus helps you find sourced utility context and test your own numbers. It does not retrieve every property's bills or certify a property's operating expenses. Use the strongest evidence available and keep estimates labeled.
Property-specific statements, signed leases, current insurance quotes, assessor records and service contracts are your due-diligence evidence. Enter or import their values yourself. Uploaded spreadsheet values are user-supplied, not independently verified.
Where connected, a municipal/provider schedule supplies a rate example—not a confirmed bill. Confirm service boundaries, account class, meter size, usage, taxes and effective dates. Current local examples are limited to Lincoln, Illinois; other ZIPs must not be presented as locally verified.
EIA electricity uses monthly residential revenue per customer, averaged across available months, up to 12. Natural gas is estimated from state residential price, volume and consumer counts. These are broader planning benchmarks, not exact providers, tariffs or property bills. See observation dates and the gas consumer-count vintage.
Electricity B25132, gas B25133 and water/sewer B25134 report household spending brackets. We find the bracket containing the median separately charged household and show its midpoint only when bounded. This is a modeled planning value, not an exact average or exact median. Annual water/sewer brackets are divided by 12. Open-ended brackets have no invented midpoint.
A ZIP Code Tabulation Area approximates ZIP geography. Census figures are survey estimates with uncertainty, not quotes. Households with no separate charge are excluded from the charged-household bracket calculation; that does not establish who pays at your property.
Parcelory U.S. property coverage: The selector lists 54 named U.S. areas: 40 with direct public sources and 14 with provider-only coverage through RentCast. A separate nationwide complete-address fallback depends on provider availability. Named areas are not a count of distinct metros or counties or a promise of complete metro coverage; direct sources cover only the listed city or county jurisdictions, and overlapping county sources are not counted as additional areas. This catalog is not a live availability check. Public parcel, assessor, zoning, sale and building fields vary by local source; provider availability and fields vary by address. Missing fields stay unavailable rather than being guessed.
Electricity and natural gas prefer EIA state benchmarks when available. Census fallback brackets are labeled. Water and sewer use one combined Census benchmark where a bounded ZIP-area observation exists, including Lincoln ZIP 62656. Do not add a separate sewer estimate to that combined amount. The Lincoln sewer schedule is useful for checking an actual bill, but is not a second automatically applied cost. Trash is unavailable outside supported local examples rather than guessed. Optional address lookup returns OpenEI tariff candidates, not a serving-utility guarantee.
Property taxes, insurance, repairs, capital replacements, HOA, management, landscaping, snow removal, pest control and cleaning still need user-entered bills, quotes or assumptions. They are not automatically verified by ZIP. Obtain property-specific information before committing to a transaction.
Apply only owner-paid costs. Combined analyzer fields are replaced by the sum of selected components; unselected components in the same field are not retained. Per-unit monthly utility inputs are multiplied by the unit count. Keep common-area, master-metered and reimbursed costs consistent.
Single-family / residential (1–4 units) and condos: the analyzer projects the entered purchase price using the exact ZIP’s five-year annualized change from the FHFA annual five-digit ZIP all-transactions house-price index. Landlord Calculus Insights loads the published observations. The page shows the ZIP, years, rate, source release and retrieval dates. No rental-income valuation is substituted when ZIP history is missing or stale.
The ZIP index is a developmental, non-seasonally-adjusted single-family measure using sales and refinance appraisals. For condos and 2–4 unit buildings, it is a broader local proxy—not a type-specific index, nearby comparable sales, or a property appraisal. The five-year historical change is compounded into the future as an assumption; it is not a forecast. Negative historical growth remains negative.
Apartment / multifamily (5+ units): income capitalization is available only with at least five units. It divides projected net operating income before debt and capital reserves by an entered cap rate. Independently supported property values can also be entered in the exit comparison.
The appreciation tool uses FHFA purchase-only house-price history. Its metro/state single-family market benchmark is not an appraisal and does not establish multifamily or commercial exit value. The displayed observation date may lag today. Applying a historical rate to projections is an assumption, not a prediction.
The main income bridge and income-based valuation use conventional NOI before debt service and capital reserve. Metrics labeled after reserve deduct the recurring capital reserve before calculating income, cap rate and DSCR. The standalone Cap Rate and DSCR tools use the NOI you enter. Lenders and appraisers may define reserves differently. Unit-by-unit rents are summed into scheduled rent; vacant units should use their expected monthly rent. The vacancy allowance is then deducted once from total scheduled income. The maximum price meeting your goals holds rents, expenses and financing terms fixed while changing the price, loan balance, down payment and price-based closing costs. Vacancy applies to scheduled rent and other modeled income; In the detailed analyzer, maintenance and capital-reserve percentages use collected base rent after vacancy. The standalone Cap Rate and NOI calculators explicitly use scheduled rent. Management fees use the selected scheduled or collected base-rent basis, which carries into the separate fee calculator. In later ownership periods, percentage-based maintenance, reserves and management follow the projected rent on their selected basis. Other operating expenses grow with the expense-growth assumption. The fee calculator labels the selected basis. Goals and listing metrics labeled after reserve deduct the entered capital reserve. Returns are pre-tax unless a tool explicitly models a tax estimate. Appreciation gains are unrealized and do not pay monthly bills.
Free Excel workbooks include report snapshots and a separate editable model. Changing model inputs recalculates that model; it does not refresh public data or alter the snapshot. Year 1 means months 1–12; Year 2 means months 13–24. Acquisition cash is presented separately at purchase. Acquisition remains a separate time-zero outflow for IRR. IRR is unavailable for non-conventional cash flows with multiple sign changes. Spreadsheet import supports one row per deal in CSV/XLSX format. Review column mappings, units, missing costs and explicit defaults. Formula text and macros are not executed; accepted cached formula values may be stale. An imported spreadsheet is not automatically converted into a public listing.
Reconcile the rent roll to leases, bank deposits and the trailing operating statement. Request 12–24 months of bills, tax records and insurance loss/quote information. Confirm service responsibilities, upcoming repairs, financing, exit costs and local requirements with the relevant professionals.
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Report questionable figures or source changes to inquiries@landlordcalculus.com.
ZIP planning estimates use 2020–2024 ACS five-year owner-occupied median annual real estate taxes (B25103) divided by median owner-occupied home value (B25077), multiplied by your entered purchase price. This ratio of two medians is not a statutory tax rate, the median of individual tax rates, a rental-property survey, or a prediction of reassessment. ZIP areas approximate postal ZIPs. Missing or annotated values are not estimated; high or unavailable survey uncertainty is flagged. Multi-unit rentals, exemptions, assessments and local taxing districts need property-specific review.
When activated, ATTOM address or state/county/parcel lookup returns the latest recorded annual bill and tax year, assessed value and retrieval date. A recorded bill is not the current unpaid balance or taxes after purchase. Confirm property identity and review supplemental assessments and exemptions with the county. Source coverage and record timing vary.
Tax data is applied only when you choose to use it. You may edit the amount. Recorded liens and mortgages are not searched; this feature does not establish clear title.
Census tax table · Census home value table · ATTOM record definitions
Management fees follow scheduled or collected base rent in each year, according to your selection; other expenses and capital reserves follow expense growth. Interest-only periods are inside the amortization term. Balloon payments are cash outflows in the year due, with no assumed refinancing. Buying Goals uses standard purchase financing; advanced loan structures remain in the analyzer and reports.
County parcel identification and boundaries cover Lincoln and surrounding Logan County communities. Parcel-specific county records add available assessment, tax-billing and sale history. Tax assessments are kept separate from market estimates; non-farm assessment-based screening uses the disclosed Illinois one-third assessment basis. Building counts and base areas are not rental-unit counts or finished living area. Exact unit counts and missing bedroom layouts still need a matched source or owner update.