User Guide

Covers both tools: the Rental Deal Analyzer and the Spec Home Evaluator. Switch between them with the picker in the top-left of the app.

Version 2.0 · updated September 12, 2026 · this guide is updated with every release

Getting started

The Rental Deal Analyzer underwrites a rental property acquisition from the numbers you give it and produces the full pro forma, financing schedule, sale analysis, equity waterfall and investor returns — plus an AI-written investor pitch deck. It works for multifamily, single-family and small rental portfolios, and mixed-use buildings with ground-floor commercial space.

Sign in with the username and password Your CFO Solution gave you. The sign-in page runs a quick automatic security check (Cloudflare Turnstile); if it shows a box, wait for the tick before clicking Sign in. Use Admin → Password (admins) or ask us to reset it.
Session timeout. For security you are signed out automatically after 60 minutes without activity, and in any case 12 hours after signing in. Time spent typing into a deal counts as activity — the app quietly keeps your session alive while you work, so a long underwriting session will not sign you out mid-deal.
If a save ever fails. You stay on the page with your deal untouched and a panel explains what to do: sign in again in a new tab, come back and click Retry save. There is also a Download a backup button that saves the deal as a file you can bring back with Import.
Automatic draft. Every edit is mirrored to a draft in this browser. If the tab crashes, you close it by accident, or you reload before saving, the deal comes back the next time you open the app — it stays there until you actually save it. Note this draft lives in one browser on one device; use Save (or Export) to keep a deal properly.
Click New for a blank deal, or Sample to load a worked example you can explore and modify.
Work down the input panel on the left. The step tracker at the top shows which sections still need input; each section ends with a Next button that takes you to the following step.
Results on the right update instantly as you type. Click Save (top bar) to keep the deal — saved deals appear in the picker and reopen automatically next time.

Fastest path: drop the broker's offering memorandum into the Start from an offering memorandum box and let AI fill in the property, unit mix, income and expenses. You then only need to add your own assumptions (price, financing, exit, equity split).

Spec Home Evaluator

The tool picker in the top-left switches between the Rental Deal Analyzer and the Spec Home Evaluator. They share your login and the admin panel, but each keeps its own list of saved projects, so a spec build never clutters your rental deals.

The spec tool answers one question: if I buy this lot, build this house and sell it, what do I make, and how wrong can I be before I lose money? You fill in eight cards — the home, the land, construction cost, the schedule, carrying costs, financing, the sale, and optionally an investor split — and it produces the profit, the margin on the sale price, the return on cost and an annualized IRR for the project.

How the money is modelled. Month 0 is the land closing. Hard and soft costs spread evenly across the build months. Carrying costs — taxes, builder's risk, utilities — run from the month construction starts until the home closes, plus on the land while you wait to start, which is the cost that quietly eats a spec deal when it sits. Your equity funds the project first and the construction loan draws only once your equity is used up, the way construction lenders actually fund; interest accrues into the loan balance and is repaid out of the sale.

The numbers to look at. Margin on the sale price is the builder's yardstick — 15–20% is a healthy spec deal and the tile turns amber below 15% and red below 8%. Beneath the returns, the margin of safety table is the one worth reading twice: how far the sale price can fall, how badly the hard costs can overrun, and how many extra months the house can sit before the profit is gone. The summary also shows the break-even sale price and the maximum land price that still supports a 20% margin — take that number to the lot negotiation.

Start from your documents. The first box at the top of the inputs takes a PDF, image or text file — a lot or land listing, a builder's bid or construction contract, a plan set, a spec sheet, an appraisal. In about 20–60 seconds you get a review panel of everything the AI found, and Apply to this project fills only those fields. It does the conversions you would otherwise do by hand: a lump-sum builder bid is divided by the heated square footage to get your cost per SF, a price per square foot from an appraisal becomes the expected sale price, and annual property taxes from a listing become the monthly carrying cost. It also keeps hard cost and site work apart, since bids quote them separately and double-counting site work is an easy way to overstate a budget. Check the applied numbers against the source — builder bids in particular vary in what they include.

Sale comps. The second box at the top of the inputs searches recent nearby sales and current active listings, concludes a supportable sale price and price per square foot for the home you are proposing, and tells you the typical days on market so you can sanity-check your months-to-sell. Tick the box and it fills the sale price. Sold comps are the evidence; the active listings are what you will be competing against.

More than one home. Set the number of homes and the months between starts, and the model staggers the builds and sells each as it finishes, with price growth applied to the later ones. Enter the land price once for the whole parcel.

Start from an offering memorandum (AI)

The optional first box at the top of the inputs accepts a PDF, image or text file — a broker OM, listing flyer, rent roll or trailing-12 statement. In about 20–60 seconds you get a review panel of everything the AI found: property details, unit mix with in-place and renovated rents, other income, vacancy, each expense line (it tells you whether it used trailing-12 actuals or the broker's pro forma), commercial suites with their lease structure, asking price, and any renovation budget the OM proposes, plus notes on what to verify.

Click Apply to this deal to fill in only the fields that were found; anything not in the document keeps its current value. Press Esc or click outside the panel to dismiss it without applying.
Large files take longer — a 5 MB offering memorandum can take 60–90 seconds. Wait for the review panel rather than uploading again; a second upload is ignored while the first is still being read.
Commercial-only properties (office, retail, industrial) work too: tick Not applicable — this property has no residential units at the top of the Property card. The unit-mix table disappears, the step turns green, and the suites carry the model (rent entered as $/SF/yr per suite).
The file is attached to the deal as its offering memorandum (right away if the deal is saved, otherwise when you save it) so the pitch deck can use it later.
Always check the applied numbers against the source — the AI is careful, but broker packages are inconsistent. Use the notes it leaves in the review panel.

Market rent comps (AI)

The second box at the top of the inputs, Find market rent comps, asks the AI to research what similar units actually rent for near your property and to suggest a market rent for each of your unit types. It is most useful right after the OM intake, once the address and unit mix are in.

Make sure the Address (street, city, state) and the unit mix are filled in — the search is built from them. Pick a search radius (1–10 miles; 3 is a good default in a city, 5–10 in suburbs or small towns) and optionally add a note for the AI such as “garden-style, no washer/dryer in unit” or “compare to renovated product only”.
Click Find comps. The AI runs several live web searches (Apartments.com, Zillow, Zumper, Rent.com, LoopNet for commercial, property websites) and usually takes 1–2 minutes.
Review the panel: for each unit type it shows your in-place rent, your current renovated rent, the AI's concluded market rent with its low–high range and how many comps support it, and the upside versus in-place. Below that is the list of comparables it found — each one links to the source listing — and its caveats.
Adjust any suggested figure in the Apply as reno rent box, untick rows you don't want, then click Apply checked market rents. The values go into the Reno rent column of the unit mix (your in-place rents are never changed), so the model's renovation program targets the market rent. Commercial suites show a market $/SF for reference; ticking one replaces that suite's $/SF, so leave it unticked to keep the in-place lease.

The comps are saved with the deal, appear as a Market rent comps table on the Pro Forma tab (and in the printed report), can be reopened with View last comps, and are available to the pitch-deck generator as market support. Remember these are asking rents from public listings on the day of the search — use them to sanity-check the broker's pro forma, then verify anything you rely on for an offer.

Step-by-step inputs

Percentages are entered as whole numbers (6 = 6%). Dollar amounts are entered without commas. Grey placeholder text shows typical values; leave anything that doesn't apply blank.

Step	What to enter	Notes
1 · Property	Name, address, type, year built, total rentable square feet, and the unit mix: each unit type with its count, current in-place monthly rent and (optionally) the renovated rent you expect after upgrades.	Square feet should include commercial space. Renovated rent only matters if you turn on the renovation program in step 5.
2 · Income & vacancy	Other income per unit per month (parking, laundry, fees, RUBS), physical vacancy, bad debt, concessions.	Vacancy is required. Typical stabilized vacancy is 5–8%.
3 · Commercial (optional)	Tick the box for mixed-use. Add each suite with square feet, annual base rent per SF and its CAM % — the share of its pro-rata recoverable expenses billed back (100 = NNN, ~50 = modified gross, 0 = gross). Set commercial vacancy and annual escalation.	CAM = suite SF ÷ building SF × (taxes + insurance + utilities + R&M + contract services) × CAM %. Tick "Recover management fee" to add that share too.
4 · Hotel / lodging (optional)	Tick Include hotel / lodging operations for a hotel or the lodging portion of a mixed-use asset. Rooms (keys), ADR, stabilized occupancy, optional starting occupancy and months to stabilize, ADR growth, then the expense ratios: other revenue, rooms and other department expense, undistributed expenses, franchise fees, hotel management fee and FF&E reserve.	Rooms revenue = keys × 365 × ADR × occupancy. Taxes and insurance are not entered here — they stay in Operating expenses so nothing is double counted.
5 · Operating expenses	Annual dollars for taxes, insurance, utilities, repairs & maintenance, payroll, G&A, marketing, contract services, other; management fee as % of income; reserves per unit per year.	Use trailing-12 actuals where you have them, then adjust (taxes usually reassess to the purchase price).
6 · Growth	Annual growth for rent, other income, expenses, taxes and insurance.	Growth steps once per year. 2–3% rent and expense growth is a common base case.
7 · Acquisition & renovation	Purchase price, closing costs %, working capital reserve. Optional renovation program: budget per unit, common-area capex, start month, months to complete, downtime per unit.	Renovation money is raised at closing (see Sources & Uses). Units come online in equal monthly cohorts and earn the renovated rent.
8 · Financing	Loan sized by LTV or a fixed amount; rate, amortization, interest-only months, loan fees. Optional refinance: month, appraisal cap rate, LTV, new rate/terms.	Refinance proceeds (new loan − payoff − fees) are distributed to investors in that month.
9 · Hold & exit	Hold period in years, exit cap rate, selling costs %.	Sale price = the next 12 months' NOI ÷ exit cap rate. Exit caps are often set 25–50 bps above the going-in cap for conservatism.
10 · Equity & waterfall	LP share of equity (the sponsor co-invests the rest), preferred return, up to three promote tiers (investor IRR hurdle → investor/sponsor split), residual split, and sponsor fees (acquisition, asset management, disposition).	Tier 1 always returns capital plus the pref, 100% to investors. Leave a tier's hurdle blank to skip it.

"Not applicable" toggles. Three of the cards can be switched off entirely when they don't apply to the deal. Tick Not applicable — this property has no residential units at the top of 1. Property for an office, retail or industrial building, and the unit-mix table is hidden and the step counts as complete. Tick Not applicable — this property has no commercial space at the top of 3. Commercial space for a straight apartment deal, and the same on 4. Hotel / lodging when there is no hotel. Each one turns its step green without any data. If you tick both, the tracker warns you — the deal would have no rental income at all.

Hotel / lodging

A deal can carry apartments, commercial suites and a hotel at the same time — tick Include hotel / lodging operations on card 4 and the hotel is underwritten alongside the rest of the property.

How the revenue is built. Rooms revenue is keys × 365 × ADR × occupancy. If the hotel is still ramping — newly opened, repositioned, or recovering — enter a starting occupancy and the months to reach stabilized; occupancy climbs in a straight line over that period and the pro forma shows the lower first-year result. Other revenue (food and beverage, parking, resort fees) is entered as a percentage of rooms revenue. ADR grows each year at its own rate, or follows your rent growth if you leave it blank.

How the expenses work. The five ratios follow the way hotel P&Ls are normally presented: rooms department expense as a share of rooms revenue, other department expense as a share of other revenue, undistributed expenses (administrative, sales and marketing, utilities, repairs) as a share of total revenue, franchise and brand fees as a share of rooms revenue, and the operator's management fee plus the FF&E reserve as a share of total revenue. What is left is the hotel's NOI, which is added to the property NOI — so it lifts the sale price at your exit cap rate, the debt metrics and every return in the model.

One thing to watch. Property taxes and insurance are entered once, in Operating expenses, and cover the whole asset. Do not fold them into the hotel ratios or they will be counted twice. The Summary tab adds RevPAR, ADR and occupancy, hotel NOI with its margin, and price per key; the Pro Forma tab shows the full departmental build-up year by year.

The whole property sells at the single exit cap rate on the blended NOI. If you want the hotel valued separately — hotels usually trade at wider cap rates than apartments — tell us and we can add a second cap rate.

Reading the results

Summary

Headline returns for the LP (cash investor), the sponsor and the project, deal metrics (cap rates, price per unit, DSCR, debt yield, breakeven occupancy), charts of NOI and cash flow, distributions by year, cumulative LP cash returned, and Sources & Uses.

Pro Forma

Year-by-year income statement from gross potential rent down to cash flow after debt service and distributions, plus the residential rent roll and, for mixed-use, the commercial suite table with estimated CAM.

Returns & Waterfall

How every dollar of distributable cash is split by tier, partner-level returns (equity invested, distributions, profit, IRR, multiple, payback), annual distributions by partner, and sponsor economics (fees + promote + co-invest).

Debt & Sale

Loan metrics, year-end balances and DSCR, the exit calculation from forward NOI to net proceeds, and the annual debt schedule.

Sensitivity

LP IRR across exit cap × rent growth and purchase price × exit cap, and LP equity multiple across hold period × exit cap. The base case is outlined; greener is better.

Assumptions

A print-friendly list of every input and the methodology notes — include it whenever you share results.

KPI definitions

Metric	Definition
LP IRR / multiple	Annualized return and total cash returned ÷ invested for the cash investors, after the waterfall and all fees.
Sponsor (GP) IRR	Return on the sponsor's co-invest including its share of distributions, the promote and all fees.
Project levered IRR	Return on total equity before the waterfall split (after debt and asset-management fees).
Unlevered IRR	All-cash return on total cost, before debt and fees — the property's own performance.
Going-in cap rate	Year-1 NOI ÷ purchase price.
Stabilized cap / yield on cost	NOI after renovations ÷ purchase price, and ÷ total cost including renovation.
DSCR	NOI ÷ annual debt service. Lenders typically want ≥ 1.20–1.25×.
Debt yield	Year-1 NOI ÷ loan amount.
Cash-on-cash	Cash flow after debt service ÷ equity invested (project), or LP operating distributions ÷ LP equity.
Breakeven occupancy	Occupancy needed to cover operating expenses and debt service.
GRM	Purchase price ÷ year-1 gross income.
Payback	Years until cumulative LP distributions equal LP equity.

Pitch deck (AI)

Save the deal first — documents and decks are stored with it.
On the Pitch Deck tab, upload the offering memorandum / listing materials, any due-diligence files (inspection, appraisal, environmental, leases, market reports — PDF or text) and property photos.
Choose the audience, tone, target slide count, sponsor name and anything you want emphasized, then click Generate pitch deck. It takes about 2–3 minutes; keep the tab open.
Review the slides. Every number comes from your model, never from the AI; the documents provide the property, market and risk narrative. Edit any title, bullet, KPI or speaker note in place, reorder or delete slides, add a slide, then Save edits.
Download PowerPoint for a branded 16:9 .pptx with real charts, photos and speaker notes, or Print / PDF.

The deck is a starting point for a securities offering, not the offering itself. Have counsel review before distribution, and keep the disclaimer on the closing slide.

Saving, sharing, printing

Save / Save as… keeps the deal under your login; only you (and Your CFO Solution admins) can see it.
Export / Import moves a deal as a small file — send it to a partner who has their own login, or keep a backup.
Print report prints every tab as a multi-page report; choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialog.
The app remembers the last deal you opened and reloads it next time you sign in.

FAQ & tips

The results show "—" everywhere

Some required inputs are missing — check the step tracker. At minimum you need a unit mix with rents, a purchase price, a hold period and an exit cap rate.

The IRR looks too high

Check the exit cap rate (a low cap inflates the sale price), the renovated rents, and whether expenses are complete. The Sensitivity tab shows how fragile the result is.

How is the promote calculated?

Each tier tracks the investors' IRR on unreturned capital month by month. Cash flows to investors until they reach the tier's hurdle, then the split changes; the sponsor's promote is the balance of each tier. LP and GP co-invest share the investor side pro rata.

Can I model an all-cash purchase?

Untick "Use senior debt". Levered and unlevered returns will then match (before fees).

Something looks wrong

Email Your CFO Solution with the deal name and a screenshot; admins can open any saved deal.

What's new

v2.0 · Sep 12, 2026 — The suite is now Pro CRE Tools, at procretools.com. There is a public homepage, self-serve sign-up with a 14-day free trial, and the tools live behind a subscription at /app (rental) and /spec (spec homes). Your account page shows your plan, renewal date and AI credit balance. AI features now draw on a monthly credit allowance — a document read costs 1 credit, a comps search 3, a pitch deck 2; everything else in the suite stays unlimited. Existing accounts were carried over with full access and no expiry. Admins get a subscribers table with one-click activation, plan and renewal-date controls, credit top-ups, and a usage report showing what to invoice for overage.
v1.9.3 · Sep 11, 2026 — The "Powered by Your CFO Solution" banner moved to its own slim strip directly under the top bar, so the logo is large enough to read and never crowds the deal picker or the buttons at any window size.
v1.9.2 · Sep 11, 2026 — Your CFO Solution branding. A "Powered by" banner with the Your CFO Solution logo now appears in the top bar of both tools, on the sign-in page, on this guide and on every printed or PDF report, linking to yourcfosolution.com.
v1.9.1 · Sep 11, 2026 — The Spec Home Evaluator now reads your documents too. Drop a lot listing, builder bid, plan set, spec sheet or appraisal at the top of the inputs and AI fills in the house, the land, the construction cost, the schedule and the expected sale price. A lump-sum bid is converted to a cost per square foot, a price per square foot is converted to a sale price, and annual property taxes become the monthly carry figure.
v1.9 · Sep 11, 2026 — Spec Home Evaluator added — the first companion tool in the suite. Switch between tools with the picker in the top-left. It underwrites a build-to-sell house end to end: land, hard and soft costs, contingency, carrying costs, a construction loan that draws after your equity, and the sale. Profit, margin, return on cost, IRR, break-even sale price, the maximum land price a 20% margin supports, a month-by-month cash flow, three sensitivity tables and AI sale comps. Each tool keeps its own list of saved projects.
v1.8.1 · Sep 11, 2026 — Your work can no longer be lost to a timeout. The app now keeps your session alive while you are actually working (previously a long stretch of typing counted as "idle" because nothing was sent to the server), mirrors every edit to a draft in your browser so a timeout, a crash or an accidental reload can all be recovered, and if a save ever does fail it keeps you on the page with your deal intact instead of bouncing you to the sign-in screen.
v1.8 · Sep 11, 2026 — New Hotel / lodging card (step 4). A property can now carry apartments, commercial suites and a hotel at once. Rooms revenue is built from keys × ADR × occupancy with an optional ramp to stabilized occupancy, and the departmental expense ratios produce a hotel NOI that flows into the property NOI, pro forma, sale value and returns. New KPIs: RevPAR, ADR, occupancy, hotel NOI and margin, price per key. Like the other cards it has a "Not applicable" tick.
v1.7.2 · Sep 11, 2026 — "Not applicable" checkboxes on the Property and Commercial space cards. Tick one and that step turns green with no data entered — for a commercial-only property with no apartments, or a straight residential deal with no commercial space. The step tracker warns if both are ticked, since the deal would then have no rental income.
v1.7.1 · Sep 11, 2026 — Fixes: uploading a second document while the first was still being read left a duplicate review panel whose buttons did nothing (the panel now replaces the old one, and closes with Esc or a click outside); commercial-only properties (office, retail, industrial) now complete the Property step from their suites instead of waiting for a residential unit mix; suite labels no longer repeat the tenant name.
v1.7 · Sep 11, 2026 — Market rent comps (AI): after the unit mix is entered, one click researches live rental listings near the address, concludes a market rent per unit type (and $/SF per commercial suite) with linked comparables, and fills the Reno rent column on approval. Comps save with the deal and print on the Pro Forma tab.
v1.6 · Sep 10, 2026 — Sign-in sessions now time out: 60 minutes of inactivity (extended automatically while you work) and a hard limit of 12 hours. Expired sessions return you to the sign-in page with a notice, and any unsaved work is restored after you sign back in.
v1.5 · Sep 8, 2026 — Cloudflare Turnstile bot protection on the sign-in page (a quick automatic check; most people never see a challenge).
v1.4.1 · Sep 8, 2026 — Guide button moved next to New / Sample at the top left.
v1.4 · Sep 8, 2026 — New deals start blank; guided step tracker with Next buttons and typical-value hints; Sample button loads the worked example; this user guide; deck generation timing and risk-slide sourcing improved.
v1.3 · Sep 8, 2026 — Start from an offering memorandum: AI reads the OM and fills in the inputs for review; last-opened deal reloads automatically.
v1.2 · Sep 8, 2026 — Pitch Deck tab: document uploads, AI-generated investor deck, in-place editing, PowerPoint export.
v1.1 · Sep 8, 2026 — Mixed-use support: commercial suites with base rent and CAM recoveries.
v1.0 · Sep 8, 2026 — Launch: pro forma, financing with refinance, renovation program, sale, multi-tier waterfall, LP/sponsor IRRs, sensitivity, printable report, saved deals and client logins.