How to Prepare a Rent Roll (With Free Template)

A rent roll is the resume of your portfolio. Lenders want one column set; owners want another. Below: what every rent roll must contain, the lender-vs-owner column sets, the format choices, and how to keep it current so it's ready when refinancing day comes.

A rent roll is the snapshot document that answers the question: who is in which unit, paying how much, and under what terms? It's requested at every refinancing, frequently by new investors before a purchase, sometimes by property insurance underwriters, and monthly by owners who want to see portfolio performance at a glance. One clean template serves all of these audiences — with minor column variations by audience type.

What a rent roll must contain

Every rent roll, regardless of audience or format, should contain these core data points:

• Property address (or property name if you use names for multi-unit buildings)
• Unit identifier (unit number, suite number, or "single-family" for houses)
• Tenant name (or "Vacant" for empty units)
• Lease start date
• Lease expiration date
• Monthly contracted rent (what the lease says)
• Actual rent collected (or "current" rate if there are concessions)
• Security deposit held
• Lease type (month-to-month vs fixed term)
• Current status (current, delinquent, notice given, vacant, pending)

Without all of these, the document doesn't function as a rent roll — it's an incomplete tenant list.

What you exclude depends on the audience. Lenders care about income stream reliability and lease terms. Owners care about cash flow and delinquencies. The core data is the same; the emphasis and format vary.

Columns lenders care about

When you're refinancing or acquiring debt financing, lenders use the rent roll to underwrite the income. Their underwriting model needs to answer: how stable is this income, and what's the realistic stabilized revenue?

Lender-focused columns to include:

Lenders will often calculate gross potential rent (sum of all contracted rents assuming 100% occupancy), compare it to effective gross income (actual collected rents with vacancy and concessions), and derive a vacancy/credit loss rate. Your rent roll needs to make that math possible without requiring the lender to build a spreadsheet from scratch.

If any unit has a below-market lease — e.g., a long-term tenant on a lease signed 8 years ago at significantly below today's rates — note it in the rent roll with a comment. Lenders flag below-market leases as rollover risk (the tenant may leave, or you may be able to re-lease at a premium). Transparency here is better than having the lender discover it independently.

Columns owners care about

When you send a rent roll to owners you manage for, the emphasis shifts from lease terms and underwriting metrics to operational performance. Owners want to know about cash and problems.

Owner-focused columns:

Some owners also want a summary row at the bottom: total monthly contracted rent, total current delinquency, number of vacant units, number of leases expiring within 90 days.

The owner-facing rent roll is a management tool. It should prompt conversations, not bury them. If you have a delinquent tenant, the rent roll should make that visible — not hidden in a note on page 4 of the monthly statement.

Common formats (PDF vs Excel vs CSV)

PDF is appropriate for sharing with external parties (lenders, prospective buyers, insurance companies). It's static, professional, and can't be accidentally edited. Most PM software exports the rent roll directly to PDF with your company branding. This is the format for anything that might be submitted as a business document.

Excel / Google Sheets is appropriate for working documents — your internal version, the editable template you maintain and update monthly. Excel allows sorting, filtering, conditional formatting (red for delinquent, green for current), and formula-driven summaries. If a lender asks for an editable rent roll, they'll usually accept Excel.

CSV is the format your PM software typically uses for data exports and imports. It's not a presentation format, but it's the one you use to move data between systems. Keep a CSV export as a data backup, but convert to PDF or Excel for sharing.

A note on format discipline: maintain one master rent roll per portfolio (or per owner, if you manage for multiple owners). Having three different versions floating in email threads with different vacancy dates and delinquency figures is a problem waiting to happen.

Sample rent roll (described)

A clean rent roll for a 6-unit building looks like this:

Header: Property name / address, report date, prepared by (your company name), page 1 of 1

Summary row at top (optional but useful for lenders):

• Total units: 6
• Occupied: 5
• Vacant: 1
• Occupancy rate: 83.3%
• Gross potential rent (GPR): $11,400/month
• Current contracted rent: $9,500/month (5 occupied units)

Detail rows (one per unit):

Footer: Trust account balance for deposits, total delinquency, preparer signature line

This is a document a lender can use in 5 minutes and an owner can read in 30 seconds. Everything material is visible.

How to keep it current

A rent roll that's 45 days out of date is almost useless. Lenders will ask for a rent roll "as of" a specific date; owners expect current data. The discipline is weekly updates, not monthly.

What triggers an update:

• New tenant moves in (add row, update status)
• Tenant moves out (change to Vacant, update move-out date)
• New lease signed (update lease dates, rent amount)
• Tenant becomes delinquent (update status, note)
• Payment received from delinquent tenant (clear the balance)
• Notice served (add to notes)

Workflow that works at scale:

• Your PM software maintains the underlying data in real time
• Export a fresh rent roll PDF at the same time each month (e.g., on the 5th, after rent collection closes)
• File it by month and property: 2026-07_Oakview-Apts_RentRoll.pdf
• Never send a rent roll without checking the export date — a stale date on a lender submission can create problems

If you're using a spreadsheet rather than PM software, assign one person (you, your assistant, your PM) to update it within 24 hours of any status change. Discipline here is harder without software enforcement.

For how the rent roll fits into your monthly owner reporting, see owner distribution reports: what property managers need to send. For how rent roll data feeds into your cash flow model, see cash flow analysis for rental properties: a simple framework.

Tools that export this in one click

Any full-featured PM software should export a rent roll without manual assembly. What to look for:

• One-click PDF export from the current live data (not a manually maintained template)
• Date-stamped report so the recipient can see when the data was pulled
• Lender vs owner format options (or customizable columns)
• Vacancy indicators built in (vacant rows clearly labeled)
• Summary statistics at the top or bottom of the report

Buildium, AppFolio, Propertyware, and Proprietio all produce rent rolls this way. RentRedi has a basic version. Stessa produces a property summary but not a true per-unit rent roll. Google Sheets requires you to build and maintain the template manually.

The one-click export matters most when a lender calls on a Friday and needs the rent roll by Monday. Having it available in 30 seconds is different from assembling it manually from multiple sources.

FAQ

How is a rent roll different from an occupancy report? An occupancy report shows what percentage of units are filled. A rent roll shows who is in each unit, under what terms, and what they're paying. The rent roll contains the underlying data; an occupancy report is derived from it.

Does a rent roll need to be certified or notarized? Usually not for standard lender submissions. Some commercial lenders require a rent roll certification (a signed statement that the data is accurate to the best of your knowledge). That's typically a cover letter or addendum, not a notarized document. If a lender asks for something specific, follow their instructions.

How far back should my rent roll data go? The current rent roll shows current status only. Lenders may also ask for a trailing 12-month rent history — sometimes called a rent ledger or lease history. Keep both.

Can I share a rent roll with a prospective buyer doing due diligence? Yes — with appropriate confidentiality agreements in place. The rent roll contains tenant names and financial information. Request a non-disclosure agreement from the buyer before sharing, or redact tenant names and share only unit-level data if that's sufficient for their purposes.

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This isn't tax advice. Talk to a CPA who works with rental real estate before acting on anything here.