Deal Screener

A rental deal screener runs the four quick checks investors use on a listing: the 1% rule, the 50% rule, cap rate, and cash-on-cash return. Enter price, rent, and costs, and you see all four at once. For example, a $240,000 duplex renting for $2,400 a month clears the 1% rule with a 7.2% cap rate. It is free, with no signup.

This deal screener runs the four quick checks investors use on a rental listing: the 1% rule, the 50% rule, cap rate, and cash-on-cash return. Enter the price, the rent, and your financing once; all four screens update together, with a pass or fail call on each.

Updated July 2026.

How the four screens fit together

Each screen answers a different question. The 1% rule asks whether the rent is big relative to the price. The 50% rule asks whether that rent survives a blunt expense assumption and still covers the loan.

Cap rate measures the building's income against its price with no loan at all, and cash-on-cash measures what your actual cash earns once the loan is in the picture. A listing that passes all four is rare at current prices; a listing that passes none is usually priced for an owner-occupant, not an investor.

These are sorting tools. I use them to get a stack of 20 listings down to 2 or 3 in an evening, and those finalists get the itemized treatment: county tax records, insurance quotes, and rent comps in the full house hacking calculator.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the same math as the single calculators?

Yes. The standalone cap rate, cash-on-cash, 1% rule, and 50% rule pages run the same formulas one at a time. This page runs them together from one set of inputs.

What counts as monthly operating costs?

Monthly operating costs are defined as property taxes, insurance, a vacancy allowance, maintenance, a reserve for big-ticket items, and management if you pay for it. The auto-fill assumes 40% of rent, which sits between a lean self-managed building and the 50% rule's long-run average. Replace it with itemized figures before making an offer.

A listing fails every screen. Does that mean it is a bad deal?

A failed screen is defined as a listing that does not clear the return thresholds at its asking price, which means it is a bad rental at that price. Screens say nothing about living there. A duplex that fails as a pure rental can still cut your housing bill sharply as a house hack, which is a different question the full calculator answers.