Home › Guides › Real estate › Rent rolls from Yardi, MRI and others
Rent rolls from Yardi, MRI, AppFolio and others: what to watch
Most rent rolls are reports printed by the building’s software: Yardi, MRI, AppFolio, Buildium, Rent Manager, RealPage, Entrata, or a broker’s spreadsheet. They all show the same kind of facts, but each lays them out its own way. Before you compare a rent roll with the leases, or ask an AI to, you need to know what each column means.
This takes real work. An AI reading a rent roll doesn’t know how each program lays out its report. If it sees a column called “Rent”, it uses it, even when the report has three columns with “Rent” in the name. If it reads the wrong column once, every comparison after that is wrong, and it still looks finished.
What a rent roll usually shows
- A date at the top. It may say “As of” or “Report Date”. Every rent on the report is the rent on that day, so that’s the day to read the leases for.
- One line for each tenant or suite. Usually the suite, the tenant, the size, the start and end dates, the rent, and often the security deposit.
- Totals at the bottom. The total size, rent and deposits for the building. Add up the lines yourself. If they don’t match the totals, a line is missing or counted twice.
- Sometimes, each lease’s future rent. Some reports, such as Yardi’s tenancy schedule and MRI’s rent roll, list under each tenant every charge and every future rent increase, with its dates. This is the most useful part of the report, and the easiest to misread.
Where it can trip you up
- More than one “rent” column. Some reports, such as those from AppFolio, RealPage and Entrata, show the asking rent (what the owner would like to get for the space) next to the rent the tenant actually pays. Make sure you use the rent the tenant pays.
- Rent per square foot next to the monthly rent. Many reports also show the rent for each square foot. Sometimes that’s per month and sometimes per year, and the column heading doesn’t always say which. $2.50 a foot a month is the same rent as $30 a foot a year. Don’t mistake either one for the monthly rent.
- A monthly figure that is more than the rent. On some reports, the monthly column is everything the tenant is billed: rent plus taxes, electricity and heat. The lease’s rent will never match it.
- Rent split in two. The software may bill one lease’s rent in two parts, for example the office and a basement storage room. The lease’s rent is the two parts added together. If free rent is taken off only one part, the tenant is still billed for the other.
- A “Lease Type” column that doesn’t mean what you think. In commercial real estate, the lease type usually tells you who pays the building’s costs: in a gross lease the landlord pays the taxes and operating expenses, and in a net lease the tenant pays them. So when you see a “Lease Type” column, you expect that. But in Buildium, for example, “Lease Type” only says whether the lease runs for a fixed term or month to month. A column that says “Fixed” tells you nothing about who pays the taxes. You have to read that in the lease.
- Suites written in code. The software often writes a suite its own way. “05-502-3” means floor 05 (the fifth floor), suite 502, and the “-3” is short for suite 503. In other words, suites 502 and 503 on the fifth floor. The lease just says “Suites 502 and 503”. They are the same space, but they don’t look alike, so an AI may not match them.
- Lines that look like tenants but aren’t current ones. Yardi, for example, can list a lease that hasn’t started yet, marked with one star (*): a new tenant who signed for a suite but hasn’t moved in. It can also list a past or replaced version of a lease, marked with three stars (***), with the tenant’s name and the old rent. Both look just like a tenant paying rent today. If they are counted, a suite can show two tenants, or rent that no one pays now.
- PDF reports. When a box is empty, such as the tenant on an empty suite or a missing deposit, the numbers after it can slide into the wrong column when the PDF is read.
How to read it right
- Label every column first. Write down which column is the rent the tenant pays, which is the asking rent, and which is rent per square foot, and whether that’s per month or per year.
- Separate the rent from the other charges. If the monthly figure includes taxes or utilities, use the charges listed under the tenant to find the rent alone.
- Add split rent back together. Compare the lease’s rent with all the rent charges for that lease, not just the first one.
- Read the leases for the report’s date. Not today’s date, and not the date the lease was signed.
- Ask for the spreadsheet, not the PDF. An Excel or CSV file keeps every number in its own column.
Then compare it with the leases
Check every line against the lease and every change to it: the rent, every future increase, free rent, the charges, the deposit, the size and the dates. Where the two don’t match, the signed lease is what binds the tenant, but the difference is worth asking the property manager about. For the checks, see How to check an AI-made rent roll reconciliation.