Rent Roll
A rent roll is a unit-by-unit or tenant-by-tenant schedule of every lease at a property, showing who occupies each space, what they pay, and when their lease ends.
What a rent roll shows
A rent roll is the property's income, listed one lease at a time. At minimum it names the unit or suite, the tenant, the leased area, the current rent, the lease start and expiration dates, the security deposit, and the occupancy status.
Commercial rent rolls usually add recovery structure, options, and escalations. Multifamily rent rolls usually add concessions, move-in date, and whether the unit is renovated.
Why it is the most-checked document in the file
Every income figure in an underwrite traces back to the rent roll. Scheduled base rent flows into effective gross income, which flows into NOI, which flows into DSCR, debt yield, and value. A rent roll that overstates income by 6 percent overstates all four.
What a credit team checks it against
- The operating statement. Annualized rent roll income should reconcile to trailing collections. A persistent gap means concessions, delinquency, or units listed as occupied that are not paying.
- The leases themselves. Reading the underlying documents catches concessions buried in addenda, rent that steps down rather than up, early termination rights, and free-rent periods that the summary omits.
- The property management system. The export and the PDF handed to the lender are not always the same file.
- Market rents. In-place rents materially below market signal upside; materially above market signal income that will not renew.
- The expiration schedule. Concentrated rollover inside the loan term is a risk the ratios do not show.
Common problems
Month-to-month tenants presented as long-term income. Related-party or employee units at nominal rent. Units counted as occupied that are down for renovation. Security deposits shown but not actually held. And a stale file: a rent roll dated four months before closing describes a property that has already changed.