How to read a rent roll, and the red flags to watch for
A rent roll can be truthful line by line and still leave you with the wrong impression. These are the checks that take minutes and the ones that catch it.
Read the expiry dates against today's date first
It needs no assumption from you and no correction of theirs: just their dates, against the day the document was produced.
Rent sitting on a lease that already ended is not contractual term income. The tenant may well still be there and still paying, and that is genuinely worth something — it is just worth less than a lease with eight years left, and on almost every rent roll you will be handed, the two sit in the same column with nothing to distinguish them.
The useful output is a share, not an anecdote: what percentage of base rent is on expired terms. That is a number you can put to a broker.
Weight everything by rent, never by count
Four tenants and four suites tell you almost nothing. What matters is how the income is distributed, and the distribution rarely matches either the tenant count or the floor plan.
- Concentration is a rent shareA tenant on 60% of the space can be 45% of the income, because larger tenants pay lower rates. The income share is the one that moves the deal.
- So is rolloverThree leases across three years sounds staggered until one of them is half the rent. Bucket expiries by year and size them by income.
- And so is creditHow much rent stands behind a covenant, not how many tenants have one. Three of four carrying a guaranty means little if the fourth is the anchor.
Suites
Add Suite| Status | Suite | Tenant | SF | $/SF/Yr | Exp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Occupied | Suite 100 | Cardinal Freight Systems | 78,400 | $7.85 | Jun 2031 |
| Occupied | Suite 200 | Meridian Cold Storage | 52,000 | $8.40 | Mar 2029 |
| Occupied | Suite 250 | Halstead Components | 31,600 | $7.20 | Nov 2027 |
| Vacant | Suite 300 | — | 22,500 | — | — |
Four rows. The income behind them is not evenly distributed, and the table does not say so.
The red flags, and what each one actually means
| What you see | Why it misleads | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Rent on an expired lease | Shown in the same column as a lease with eight years left | Ask for the holdover terms in writing |
| Month-to-month income | Counted as contractual term income | Separate it and value it differently |
| Blank guarantor column | Read as “no guaranty” when it may mean “not extracted” | Ask which it is, per lease |
| Two suites, one name | Square footage and rent attributed to the wrong unit | Reconcile the SF total against the printed total |
| Rent that misses its schedule | In-place rate disagrees with the lease's own steps | Find which of the two was edited |
| A totals line that does not sum | The rows and the total disagree | Add the column yourself, every time |
None of these require the document to contain a false number. Every one of them is a true row presented in a way that leads somewhere wrong, which is exactly why reading a rent roll is a skill rather than a data-entry step.
What a weighted average lease term does not cover
On the building above, WALT is 3.36 years — computed across 162,000 of 184,500 square feet, because the vacant suite has no lease term to average.
So the headline number describes 87.8% of the asset and is structurally incapable of mentioning the rest. On a building where the vacancy is the problem, the one figure everybody quotes cannot see it.
Read it with two things beside it: how much of the building it covers, and how much space is already past expiry. Both are explained here.
Add the columns up yourself
Totals lines are typed more often than they are computed, and a discrepancy is rarely random — it usually points at a row that was added or removed after the total was written.
- Square feet against the printed totalA difference equal to exactly one suite's area tells you which row is the problem and in which direction.
- Rent against the operating statementIf the rent roll and the P&L disagree, that gap is a question worth asking rather than an average worth taking.
Suites — reconciled
Add Suite| Status | Suite | Tenant | SF | $/SF/Yr | Exp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Occupied | Suite 100 | Cardinal Freight Systems | 78,400 | $7.85 | Jun 2031 |
| Occupied | Suite 200 | Meridian Cold Storage | 52,000 | $8.40 | Mar 2029 |
| Occupied | Suite 250 | Halstead Components | 31,600 | $7.20 | Nov 2027 |
| Vacant | Suite 300 | — | 22,500 | — | — |
Every row came out of a lease, and the totals are computed from the rows rather than typed beside them.
Questions people ask
What should I check first on a rent roll?
The expiry dates, against today's date. Rent sitting on leases that already ended is not contractual term income, and it is almost always presented in the same column as leases with years left to run. It costs thirty seconds and it is the single most informative check on the document.
Does a rent roll's total always add up?
Not reliably. Totals lines are frequently typed rather than recomputed, and a discrepancy usually means a row was added or removed after the total was written. Summing the column yourself is worth doing on every rent roll you are given.
What does a blank guarantor column mean?
You cannot tell, and that is the point. It may mean no guaranty exists, or that nobody extracted it. Those are very different facts and a summary that silently treats a blank as 'none' converts an unknown into a finding. Ask, per lease.
How do I spot tenant concentration?
Weight by rent, not by count or by square footage. Anchors and large industrial tenants pay lower rates per foot, so a tenant occupying 60% of the space might be 45% of the income — and the income share is what moves the deal.
Is a long weighted average lease term always good?
No. If your rents sit below market, long terms lock in the gap and a roll is when you capture it. WALT is also computed over leased space only, so on a partly empty building it describes the part that is working and says nothing about the part that is not.
What if the rent roll disagrees with the operating statement?
That gap is often the most useful thing in the deal. It usually means either a lease was not provided, or something is being collected that no lease supports. Either way it is a specific question to ask rather than a discrepancy to average away.
Keep reading
What is a rent roll?
The document itself, column by column.
WALT explained
Why the average hides what matters.
Lease guaranties
Why a blank column is not a denial.
Deal audit
The same checks, run against your own model.
How to read an OM
The document the rent roll usually arrives inside.
Lease abstraction
Building the rent roll from the leases instead.
Build the rent roll from the leases instead.
Upload the leases and DealWise reads the terms out of each one, so the table is derived from the contracts rather than retyped from somebody's summary — and every figure traces back to a clause. Free plan, no credit card.