The Spreadsheet Behind My First Property, Free to Download
The five-tab spreadsheet I use on every deal, free, no signup, loaded with my own duplex as the example, and the two cells I learned to be pessimistic about.
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Real Estate Math — all 32 articles
- A Free BiggerPockets Calculator Alternative With No Account and No Report Limit
- Cap Rate, Explained With a Worked Example
- Cash-on-Cash Return, Explained With a Real Example
- Depreciation on a rental, explained without the jargon
- Do you pay taxes on house hacking income?
- Effective housing cost: the one number house hackers should track
- Five Quick-Check Calculators for Sizing Up a Rental
- House Hacking Index 2026: LoopNet’s Best Cities, Re-Scored
- How Much Can You Make House Hacking? My Actual Numbers
- How Much My Tenants Actually Covered: Twelve Months of Rent Against the Mortgage
- How to Analyze a 2-4 Unit Property, Step by Step
- How to Calculate Cash Flow on a Rental Property, Step by Step
- How to Identify a Good Investment Property
- How Wars and Global Events Actually Move Your Mortgage Rate
- Landlord Tax Deductions: What House Hackers Can Write Off
- Own for Less Than You Rent, Part 2: 12 More Metros
- Realtor.com’s Best First-Time Buyer Cities, Run Through Duplex Math
- The 1% Rule in Real Estate: What It Screens For, and Where It Breaks
- The 50% Rule for Rental Properties, Explained With a Worked Example
- The 6-Step Checklist for Running the Numbers on a Rental
- The Best Cities to Buy a Duplex in 2026, Ranked
- The Best Free House Hacking Calculators in 2026
- The Duplex Math, Line by Line
- The Spreadsheet Behind My First Property, Free to Download
- What a $160,000, $200,000, and $280,000 Duplex Actually Costs Per Month
- What I Would Do Differently at Today’s Rates: My Duplex, Priced This Week
- What Is a Good Cash-on-Cash Return?
- What Went Wrong After I Bought the Duplex: the Boiler, the Basement, and Guest Number One
- Why Mortgage Rates Follow the 10-Year Treasury, Not the Fed
- Why New Homes Keep Getting More Expensive
- Why Some Cash-Flowing Deals Are Bad Purchases, and What I Check First
- Why the Housing Bubble Rarely Bursts the Way People Expect
Real Estate Math
What I Would Do Differently at Today’s Rates: My Duplex, Priced This Week
My $470,000 duplex priced at this week’s 6.71 percent rate: the payment, my share after both units, and the three things I would change about how I bought it.
Why Some Cash-Flowing Deals Are Bad Purchases, and What I Check First
A deal can cash flow on paper and still be a bad buy. What my 83-metro screen shows about cheap listings, and what I check before I open a spreadsheet.
What Went Wrong After I Bought the Duplex: the Boiler, the Basement, and Guest Number One
Four things went wrong in my first year owning a duplex: a $20,000 boiler, a $30,000 basement, a first Airbnb guest who demanded a refund, and the week I nearly quit.
How Much My Tenants Actually Covered: Twelve Months of Rent Against the Mortgage
Twelve months of upstairs rent and Airbnb payouts against a $2,880 payment on my $470,000 duplex, month by month, plus the costs the tenants did not touch.
Realtor.com’s Best First-Time Buyer Cities, Run Through Duplex Math
Realtor.com’s 2026 list of the best markets for first-time buyers ranks Rochester, New York first. My own screen, which asks
What a $160,000, $200,000, and $280,000 Duplex Actually Costs Per Month
Three duplex price tiers from my 2026 data run: the monthly cost of owning each after tenant rent, the cash you need at closing, and why the top tier loses.
The 50% Rule for Rental Properties, Explained With a Worked Example
The 50% rule says half your rental’s gross rent goes to operating costs before the mortgage. The formula, where the number comes from, and where it breaks for a house hack.
House Hacking Index 2026: LoopNet’s Best Cities, Re-Scored
LoopNet’s new House Hacking Index ranks cities by investor gross yield on its own listings, and the Foothold Score ranks
How to Analyze a 2-4 Unit Property, Step by Step
A 2-4 unit property is analyzed in four passes, in order: the metro (do local rents support local prices), the