What everything in real estate should cost.
Price-check any quote and see where renovation money actually returns, with current market benchmarks and a live return calculator. Built so an owner or broker can sanity-check a number before signing it.
Seller's closing-cost estimator.
What selling actually costs: transfer taxes, fees, commission, and what lands in your pocket. Pick your state or city for a tighter estimate.
All figures are approximate, not a quote. Confirm with a title company or attorney.
Selling triggers capital gains. See what a 1031 exchange could keep working for you →Estimate only, verify before relying on it. Transfer-tax rates for the listed cities and states were checked against public guides in early 2026 and reflect the seller's customary share. Several places are graduated, so the effective rate rises with price (e.g. NY, NJ, CT, SF, LA, Seattle, DC), those are modeled by tier here. Figures are still simplified (residential assumptions; some brackets approximated; exemptions, splits, and county variation not fully modeled) and rates change. Title insurance, attorney/escrow, recording, and prorated property taxes are rough placeholders, proration assumes roughly two months of taxes at ~1.1%/yr and varies by your closing date and local tax rate. This is educational, not legal, tax, or financial advice, confirm real numbers with a title company, attorney, or your local recording office.
What a 1031 could keep working for you.
Compare selling now and paying capital gains against deferring through a 1031, and see what the capital could buy as a replacement NNN property at various cap rates.
Tax rates 36.50% blended
in capital that would otherwise go to taxes.
Selling costs reduce your taxable gain, so enter only true selling expenses (commission, transfer taxes, legal), not prorated property tax or mortgage payoff. Need an estimate? Use the Closing-Cost tool above.
Implied annual NOI from reinvesting the full 1031 proceeds at various cap rates, compared to current NOI.
| Cap rate | Replacement value | Implied NOI | vs. current NOI |
|---|
Illustration only, verify with a tax advisor. Real capital gains tax depends on your adjusted basis, depreciation recapture (typically taxed at 25% federally, not modeled separately here), holding period, AMT, and your overall tax situation. A 1031 defers tax; it doesn’t eliminate it. Strict rules apply: 45-day identification, 180-day closing, like-kind property, equal-or-greater value, qualified intermediary required. Always work with a tax advisor and a qualified intermediary before structuring an exchange.
Short-term rental analyzer.
What you'd actually take home from Airbnb vs. a regular lease, after cleaning, supplies, management, and the costs most people forget.
See the full Airbnb breakdown
Estimate only. Short-term rental income is seasonal and highly local, occupancy and nightly rates swing a lot by market, season, and how actively the listing is managed. Many cities and HOAs restrict or ban short-term rentals, require permits, or impose lodging taxes; check your local rules before counting on this income. Figures here are your inputs plus simple assumptions (furnishing spread over 5 years; repairs and management as % of revenue). This is educational, not legal, tax, or financial advice.
Cost & fee reference.
Every quote in real estate is negotiable, but only if you know the benchmark. This is what the major costs of buying, building, financing, and operating a property typically run, so an owner or broker can sanity-check a quote before signing. Figures are current market ranges from public data, not the field guide, and not quotes.
What brokerage costs, and what the fee buys.
The biggest single line on a sale is usually the brokerage commission, typically 4–6% nationally, and the first instinct is to shop it down. Sometimes that’s the right call. Often it isn’t. Here is the honest version, so you can decide for your own deal rather than be sold on a number.
- Pricing the asset correctly. The single most expensive mistake is mispricing. A broker who knows the submarket and the buyer pool prices to draw competition, not to sit.
- The buyer network. On income property, the value is reaching the right 20 buyers, not the public. That rolodex is the product, and it’s what discount models usually skip.
- Running a real process. Marketing spend, an offering package, a call-around, multiple bids, and a managed timeline create competitive tension a single sign-and-list does not.
- Holding the deal together. Most deals wobble in diligence. A broker who manages the retrade, the lender, the attorneys, and the buyer’s cold feet routinely saves more than the fee.
- The deal sells itself. A clean, in-demand asset in a hot market with an obvious buyer may not need a full process.
- You already have the buyer. If you’re selling to a known party, you’re paying mostly for paperwork and negotiation, not sourcing.
- You can run the process yourself. Experienced owners with their own network and the time to manage diligence can capture some of the spread.
- Simple, low-price, fast. The smaller and simpler the deal, the less a full-service process changes the outcome.
Cap rate, NOI, DSCR.
Plug in your figures for the metrics that decide a deal: cap rate, NOI, DSCR, debt yield, and more. Nothing is stored; it's quick math you can copy.
Stress-test a deal.
Drag the sliders, watch cap rate, leverage, coverage, and cash flow move together. A sandbox for building intuition.
Monthly debt service — · cash in —. Educational estimate, not investment advice.
Renovation return map.
Not every dollar spent on a building comes back. This shows where renovation money returns the most, ranked by return, with the value it creates, the rent it lifts, and how fast it pays back. Built for income property, where a renovation does two things at once: it raises rent, and it permanently lifts the building's value. The numbers are directional ranges to plan with, not quotes, and they do not include the contingency every project needs (budget 10–15%, or 15–20% on older buildings).
Pairing this with a renovation? Know what the work should cost first →
A renovation that raises rent by $150/month across 10 units adds $18,000 to annual NOI. At a 6% cap rate, that lifts the building's value by $300,000, value that's real the day the rents are in place, whether or not you ever sell. That's the difference between thinking like a homeowner and thinking like an investor: you're not buying a nicer kitchen, you're buying NOI that a cap rate multiplies into value.
MCIs and IAIs: how renovation recovery works on regulated units.
On a free-market unit, a renovation chases whatever rent the market will pay. On a rent-stabilized unit, the rent you can add is capped by formula, which is why an $80,000 gut renovation that pencils on a market unit often does not on a stabilized one. Two mechanisms govern recovery.
In-unit work: kitchen, bath, flooring, appliances. Recovery is now a permanent rent increase, but capped: up to $30,000 of cost within 15 years, recovered at 1/168th per month (buildings ≤35 units) or 1/180th (over 35 units).
- $30,000 spent, small building → about $179/month added, permanently.
- A second tier raises the cap to $50,000 (recovered at 1/144th or 1/156th) only for units a prior tenant held 25+ years, or registered vacant in 2022–2024 — and requires DHCR certification first.
- Spend above the cap is yours to eat; it does not convert to rent.
Building-wide systems: roof, boiler, windows, plumbing, wiring. Requires DHCR approval (tenants can challenge), and recovery is now temporary: the increase is capped at 2% of rent per year and is removed after 30 years.
- Buildings with ≤35% regulated units, or with hazardous violations, are not eligible until cured.
- The 2% annual collectibility cap means recovery is slow; large MCI awards take years to fully reach the rent.
- This is recovery, not profit: treat MCIs as cost defrayment, not a value play.