How to Calculate Cash Flow on a Rental Property

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before you buy your first (or next) real estate deal, you need to know one thing—how to calculate cash flow on a rental property. The problem? 99% of investors do this wrong and get burned as a result. That’s why after buying dozens of rental properties, we’ve come up with arguably the most accurate way to calculate real estate cash flow, and today, we’re showing you how to do it, too. Joining us is Ashley Kehr from the Real Estate Rookie podcast, who’s been buying rentals routinely for over ten years now. We’ll use the BiggerPockets Rental Property Calculator (which you can try for free!) to run numbers on a real rental property Dave is looking to buy right now. You’ll learn exactly how to estimate both fixed and variable expenses, how much emergency reserves to set aside, how to account for property management fees, vacancy, repairs, and more, plus what to do to instantly boost your potential cash flow before you buy! In This Episode We Cover How to calculate cash flow on any rental property before you submit an offer The easiest way to increase your cash flow if it’s not hitting the mark What a good deal looks like to Ashley and Dave (when they’d submit an offer) How to estimate your expenses (accurately) so you get the most cash flow possible How much cash flow should you be making in 2026? And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1212 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you calculating cash flow the right way?
0:03.0	Because this is the key metric that will tell you if a property is the right deal to buy
0:08.0	and how your investments are actually performing.
0:11.8	But it only works if you're including all of the necessary inputs when you do the math.
0:17.0	If you're only subtracting your mortgage payment from your rental income, that is not cash flow.
0:22.5	This is how you calculate cash flow the right way.
0:30.6	Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer. I'm a data analyst. I'm the head of real estate investing here at
0:35.6	Bigger Pockets. And with me today on the show is
0:38.5	Ashley Care, co-host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Rookie Podcast, Ashley. Thanks for being here.
0:44.9	Dave, thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited to talk about cash flow. Yeah,
0:49.1	it's a super crucial thing. And I think some people oversimplify it. But it doesn't need to be hard. You just need to
0:55.6	make sure that you follow the right steps. I don't know if you ever see this, Ashley, but I see
1:02.1	these people on the internet all the time, claim that they have this incredible, sort of almost
1:07.1	unbelievable cash flow on real estate deals. And then you sort of dig into it and you realize they're clearly just leaving out some
1:13.4	of the expenses or just not doing the math.
1:16.5	So today what we're going to do is show the audience how to do the real math.
1:21.8	And I'm actually going to use a real on market deal that I have recently been analyzing.
1:26.9	I'm going to show you all every single number
1:28.5	you need to include in your cash flow analysis. Explain why your vacancy, maintenance, and
1:33.2	CAP-X expenses should be consistent every month, whether you spend that cash or not. And then we're
1:38.4	going to talk about how much cash flow you actually need right now and what constitutes a good deal.
1:46.7	Because once you know that and how to calculate it correctly, then you can actually go out and pull the trigger on some great deals.
	...

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