Underwrite a deal in thirty seconds

You read the books. You went to the meetups, maybe a mastermind. You feel empowered, and you still have not made an offer. Usually the missing piece is not courage; it is that you cannot underwrite quickly, so every deal feels like a term paper.

Here is the whole first pass. Take the asking price and next year's realistic net operating income, income minus operating expenses, before debt. Divide NOI by price: that is your going-in cap rate. Now sketch the debt: at today's rates, does NOI cover the annual payment with room to spare? I want comfortable coverage, not a photo finish. Then ask the only strategic question that matters on a first pass: where does NOI grow? Under-market rents, an expansion play, expenses a professional operator would cut. If you cannot name the lever, there is no deal, just a price.

Thirty seconds is not the finish line. It is the filter that decides which deals deserve thirty minutes.

Speed matters because volume matters. The person who can screen twenty deals a week makes more offers than the person who agonizes over two. And the worst thing that happens when you submit an offer is somebody says no.

Do not stop at the screen, ever. The thirty-minute pass verifies taxes, insurance, payroll, deferred capex, and the market ring. But the screen is what gets you moving today instead of next year.

A screen, not a verdict

The thirty-second underwrite exists to answer one question: is this worth an hour of my life? It is not a substitute for real diligence, and treating it as one is how people buy bad deals fast instead of slowly. But most of what crosses your desk deserves to be killed in half a minute, and having a fast honest filter is what preserves your attention for the deals that deserve it.

The four numbers

The three additions I always make to a seller’s numbers

Management, even if I plan to self-manage, because a property that only works when I work for free is not an asset. Capital reserves per unit or per square foot, because deferred maintenance is a loan at a terrible rate. And a vacancy figure that reflects the market rather than the seller’s best twelve months.

Those three lines have killed more deals for me than price ever has, and every one of them would have hurt more after closing than it did in the spreadsheet.

Why speed matters

Because the operator who can screen fifty deals a month with a consistent model will find the two that work, and the one who agonizes over each of five will not. The calculator I give away exists for exactly this: same inputs, same math, every time, so the decision is about the deal rather than about your mood that afternoon.

Why I built the calculator

Because I kept doing this math differently depending on my mood. Some nights I was generous with the vacancy assumption; some mornings I was harsh about expenses. Same deal type, different answers, which meant my comparisons were meaningless and my confidence was theater.

A fixed model fixes that. Same inputs in the same order, the same expense floor, the same reserve, the same rate assumption, every single time. It removes me from the arithmetic so that the only variable left is the deal itself, which is exactly where the variance belongs.

It also makes the conversation with a partner or a lender straightforward. I am not defending a spreadsheet I built last night; I am showing the same model I run on everything, with the inputs visible and the assumptions stated. That is a much shorter meeting.

What thirty seconds cannot tell you

It cannot tell you whether the roof is at the end of its life, whether the leases are assignable, whether the trade area has three competitors under construction, or whether the seller is someone you want to be in a transaction with. Those things take the hour that the screen earned you.

So use it as a gate, not a verdict. Fast enough to protect your time, honest enough that a pass means something, and never so convenient that it replaces the work that actually keeps you out of trouble.