Rent Roll Template: Every Column That Should Be On It

Introduction

A rent roll is the single document a lender, buyer or appraiser will read first, and most owner-prepared ones are missing the columns that make it useful.

TL;DR: A rent roll is a point-in-time snapshot of every unit, who occupies it, what they pay, and when their lease ends. The columns that separate a credible rent roll from a wishful one are market rent alongside actual rent, lease end date, deposit held, and delinquency. Copy the structure below into a spreadsheet — it is the format underwriters expect.

The template

Use one row per unit, including vacant ones. Print this page or copy the table into a spreadsheet.

Unit	Beds/Baths	Sq Ft	Tenant	Lease start	Lease end	Actual rent	Market rent	Deposit held	Balance owed	Status
1A	2/1	850								Occupied
1B	2/1	850								Occupied
2A	1/1	620								Vacant
2B	1/1	620								Notice given
						Total	Total	Total	Total

Add a header block above the table:

• Property address
• As-of date — a rent roll without one is worthless
• Total units / occupied units / occupancy %
• Prepared by

The four columns most owners leave out

Market rent alongside actual rent. This is the loss-to-lease, and it is the most important number on the document for a buyer. A property at $1,400 actual against $1,650 market has $250 per unit of upside that does not require a renovation — just turnover. Omitting it hides the value-add case, which is a strange thing for a seller to do.

Lease end date. Twelve units all expiring in the same month is a concentration risk. Leases expiring in December in a cold-weather market is a leasing problem. A buyer will build a turnover schedule from this column, and its absence reads as concealment.

Deposit held. These transfer at closing and are a liability, not income. A rent roll that omits deposits usually accompanies an owner who commingled them, which is a separate and larger problem.

Balance owed. Current delinquency per tenant. An owner reporting 100% occupancy and 8% delinquency has 92% economic occupancy, and only the second number predicts next month's deposits.

Status codes worth using

Keep them consistent and few:

• Occupied — leased, current
• Occupied (delinquent) — leased, balance owed
• Notice given — vacating on a known date
• Vacant — ready — available now
• Vacant — not ready — needs work; note the scope
• Down — uninhabitable, not rentable
• Non-revenue — model, office, employee unit

The distinction between "vacant ready" and "vacant not ready" matters more than the occupancy percentage. Ten vacant-not-ready units is a capital budget, not a leasing problem.

What a buyer does with your rent roll

Three things, in order:

1. Total actual rent × 12 becomes gross scheduled income, the top of the cap rate calculation.
2. Actual against market sets the value-add thesis and therefore the price they will pay.
3. Lease expirations build the turnover and renovation schedule that drives the business plan.

Anything you omit gets replaced with a conservative assumption. That assumption is always worse for you than the real number would have been.

Rules that keep it credible

• Date it. "As of 1 August 2026". A rent roll with no date cannot be reconciled to anything.
• Include vacant units. Omitting them inflates the average rent and is transparent to anyone who counts the rows against the unit count.
• Reconcile it to your bank deposits. A buyer will ask for twelve months of statements and tie them out. Discrepancies destroy credibility on every other number you have provided.
• Do not include projected rents in the actual column. Put them in the market column, where they belong and where they will be believed.
• Note concessions. A unit at $1,500 with two months free is a $1,250 unit. Hiding this is the single most common rent roll misrepresentation.

Using it as a buyer

Ask for the rent roll and twelve months of bank statements together, then check three things: that the deposits reconcile to the roll, that recent leases signed are at or near the stated market rent, and that concessions are disclosed. If recent leases are well below the market rent column, the market rent column is aspirational.

Pair it with the due diligence checklist for the wider document request, and run the totals through the rental property ROI calculator on your own expense assumptions rather than the seller's.

Conclusion

The rent roll is not a formality — it is the primary evidence for the income half of the valuation. Include the four columns above, date it, reconcile it, and disclose concessions. A credible rent roll gets you a better price than an optimistic one, because the optimistic one gets discounted for everything it might be hiding.