Know if a property makes money
before you buy it

Yes, and you are the reader we rewrote this page for. You type in an address. We tell you, in ordinary words, whether renting that place out would make money, how much, and what could go wrong.

You do not need to learn the jargon first. Where we cannot avoid a trade word we explain it on the spot, and there is a section further down called What these words mean that covers all of them in about two minutes.

You give it an address. It goes and looks up what similar places nearby charge per night and how full they stay, whether the city allows renting by the night at that address, who owns the building and whether any debts are attached to it, and what the running costs would be. Then it works out what you would have left after every bill, gives the deal a report card letter, and tells you to buy it, test it carefully, or walk away.

No. Most people run their first few checks on places they are only curious about. That is the point: it is far cheaper to find out a deal is bad before you own it.

You also do not have to buy anything to use the main idea. One common approach is renting a flat on a normal lease and then renting it out by the night, which needs the landlord's written permission and no mortgage at all. We check whether the lease allows it, because that is the part people get wrong.

That depends entirely on the property, which is why we show it as its own number called cost to start. It is every cheque you write before the first guest arrives: furniture, the first month, the deposit, and any one off fees.

For a small furnished flat rented by the night, that figure is often somewhere between fifteen and thirty thousand dollars. We never guess it for you. If nobody has entered the real figure, we show no return at all rather than an invented one.

No, and we would rather lose the sale than pretend. Most addresses we check are not worth buying. That is the useful part: the tool earns its keep by talking you out of bad deals, not by finding you a miracle.

When a deal is good we show three versions of the number, a careful one, a realistic one and a hopeful one, because real life lands somewhere in a range. Anyone showing you one confident number is guessing.

Type in the address of a place you already know well. Your own home, a friend's flat, somewhere you have stayed. You will recognise whether the answer feels right, and that tells you more about whether to trust the tool than any marketing page can.

Your first 3 checks are free. No card, no time limit.

S is the best, then A, then B, then C, and D is the worst. It is based on what you clear each month after every bill is paid.

Because it is based on the monthly amount and not on the percentage, a thousand dollars a month earns the same letter whether you put in thirty thousand or a hundred and fifty thousand. How hard your money worked is shown separately, as a percentage, so you can see both.

It is the one word version. Buy it means the numbers and the checks both hold up. Test it carefully means it could work but something needs watching, so start small. Walk away means do not.

Problems we find can pull a letter down but never push it up. And some things overrule everything: if renting by the night is illegal at that address, it is never a buy, however good the numbers look.

Because one number would be a lie told precisely. Nobody knows exactly how full a property will be next year.

So we give a careful case, a realistic case and a hopeful case. If the careful case still works, you have a real deal. If only the hopeful case works, you are betting rather than investing, and you should be able to see that at a glance.

The letter and the verdict at the top. Then the money: what comes in, every cost that comes out of it, and what is left, listed line by line so nothing hides in a lump sum. Then the 13 checks, each with a link to the record or listing it used. Then the comparable places nearby and what they charge.

You can read it on screen or download it as a tidy document to send to a partner, a lender or a spouse.

Yes. Download the document and send it. There is nothing in it that needs a login to read, so a partner, a lender or a spouse can open it without signing up for anything.

The only thing worth knowing is that it is a snapshot. It shows the numbers as they stood the day you ran it, and it says which day that was on the page.

Not for browsing. The standard check is enough to decide whether a place is worth a second look, and that is most of what you will do.

Once one deal looks real, the deep report is worth it. It goes and finds the actual listings around the property, tells you what they charge and how full they are, works out what yours is missing and whether adding it pays for itself, sets out what to charge in each season, reads whether the area is improving, and compares our own numbers against what nearby places genuinely earned last year. It counts as five checks instead of one.

There is no honest single accuracy score, and anybody quoting you one is selling something. Here is what we do instead, and you can check all of it.

We look things up live rather than serving data bought months ago. On the deep report we compare our reading against what places near yours actually earned last year, and if ours is running more than ten per cent high we pull it down and print that we did. And we run short term rentals ourselves, so when the tool is wrong we find out with our own money.

Most of them bought a large pile of data some time ago and show you a slice of it. That data has a specific flaw worth knowing about: it usually counts a night the owner blocked off for themselves as a night that was booked, which makes every property look busier and more profitable than it is.

We go and look, for your address, the moment you ask, and we show you every source so you can check us. We also check the things a spreadsheet cannot: whether the city allows it, who owns the building, and whether the lease lets you re rent the place. Those kill more deals than the numbers do.

Live listings on Airbnb, VRBO, Booking, Expedia and Trip.com. City and county rules. Building permits. Homeowner association rules. Court records including evictions and code violations. Tax and assessor records. Rent guides such as Zillow.

On the deep report we also buy a second opinion: an independent company tells us what places near yours actually earned over the past year, and we show that next to our own reading rather than blending the two.

No. Same address, same numbers. We keep the listings we found for your deal and show you those same ones every time you come back, whether you look on the website or ask Claude.

Changing a cost reprices your deal straight away using those same listings. It never quietly goes and looks again. When you do want a fresh look there is a button for it, and the report says which look it used.

Because the brakes only work in one direction. A problem we find can pull a grade down, never push it up.

Empty and dead listings are thrown out before we work out a typical price, and we tell you how many we threw out. If demand in the area is weak, the grade is capped no matter how good the profit looks on paper. And if our reading runs hot against what nearby places really earned, we cut ours. A low reading is never raised to match a high one.

We write NO DATA and leave it there. We would rather show you a hole than fill it with a guess.

A place where the information is thin is also a warning in its own right, so it holds the grade down rather than being treated as neutral.

Neither, and it legally cannot be. We are not licensed advisers. We give you researched facts and worked out numbers, and you decide.

Nobody can promise what a property will earn. What we can do is show you every dollar between what a guest pays and what you keep, so that when you make the call you are making it with your eyes open.

A home rented out by the night instead of by the year. Airbnb is the version most people have heard of. VRBO and Booking do the same thing.

It earns more per night than a normal tenancy and costs a great deal more to run, because somebody has to clean it, restock it and answer messages between every guest. Whether the extra income beats the extra work and cost is exactly the question we answer.

The price of one night for the guest, before the cleaning fee and tax.

That sounds obvious but the booking sites disagree with each other. Airbnb shows a price with cleaning already baked in, while VRBO and Booking show it separately. So we strip every listing back to the same definition before comparing them, and the cleaning fee is counted once and once only. Any listing we cannot check properly is left out, and we tell you how many were left out.

How full the place stays. Seventy per cent occupancy means it is booked roughly seven nights out of every ten.

What counts as good depends entirely on the place and the season, which is why we compare against real listings nearby rather than a national average. A beach flat at fifty per cent can beat a city flat at eighty, because the nightly rate is doing the work instead.

No. A common route is to rent a place on a normal lease and then rent it out by the night. It needs far less money up front because there is no mortgage and no deposit on a purchase.

It has one absolute requirement: the lease has to allow it, in writing. Doing it without permission is the fastest way to lose the flat and the furniture at once. We check the lease terms and flag it clearly.

Then we say so and the deal is dead, regardless of the numbers. That is not a judgement call we leave to you, because operating illegally can cost more in fines than the property earns in a year.

Cities fall into three groups: it is allowed, it is allowed with limits such as a licence or a cap on nights, or it is banned. We tell you which, and we link to the rule so you can read it yourself.

More than people expect. Guests message at midnight, cleaners cancel, boilers break on a Sunday.

Our numbers assume you pay someone to manage it, because that is the honest way to compare it against leaving your money elsewhere. If you plan to do it all yourself you keep that fee, and the report shows you both versions so you can decide whether the extra income is worth your weekends.

Six other things, and we price them for the same address so you can compare instead of guessing.

Rent it by the year to one tenant. Fix it up, rent it out, then borrow against the new higher value to buy the next one. Rent to a tenant whose rent is paid partly by a government programme. Fix it up and sell it. Buy it and hold it for the long run. Or take over the existing owner's mortgage payments instead of getting your own.

Which of them you can run depends on your plan, and it is worth knowing before you start: your free checks cover renting by the night. Renting by the year comes with any plan, and the other five come with Pro.

Whichever one the numbers favour at that address, which is not the same at every address. A flat in a tourist city may only work by the night. A house in a quiet suburb may only work by the year.

That is the reason we run them rather than making you choose first. Choosing first is how people end up forcing a strategy onto a property that does not suit it. Running every one of them side by side for the same address is what Pro is for.

Less money, far less work, and much more predictable. One tenant, one monthly payment, no cleaning, no messages.

For a lot of people that is the better deal even when the nightly numbers look higher, because the nightly numbers assume somebody does the work. We show both so the comparison is a real one.

You buy something in poor condition cheaply, do the work, rent it out, and then borrow against its new higher value. If the sums work you get most of your original money back out and still own the property, which lets you do it again.

It works when the repairs add more value than they cost. It goes badly when the repair budget is optimistic, which it usually is, so we make you enter a real one.

Buy it, do the work, sell it, keep the difference. There is no rent involved, so the whole thing rests on two numbers: what the work costs and what it sells for.

The killer is time. Every month you own it you pay the mortgage, the tax, the insurance and the bills with no income coming in, so we count those months as a real cost rather than ignoring them.

A programme where part or all of a tenant's rent is paid by a government body rather than the tenant. In the United States the best known one is called Section 8.

The attraction is that the paying part is reliable. The trade offs are an inspection to pass, a cap on what you may charge, and more paperwork. We price it with those in.

Whether renting by the night is legal there. Whether the building or the homeowner association bans it. Whether anyone in the building already does it, which tells you a lot. How many competitors sit within a quarter of a mile. What the hotels a mile away charge, because that is your price ceiling. Whether anything actually brings visitors to the area.

Then: what long term rent should be. The owner's history. Building code violations and insurance problems. Noise and nuisance complaints. Building work planned nearby. Safety. And pests. A deep report adds how the area is changing and how the schools are.

A lien is a debt or a legal claim already attached to the property. Unpaid tax, a builder who was never paid, a court judgement.

The reason it matters is that it follows the building, not the person who owed the money. Buy the building and you can inherit the problem. It is a quiet, expensive surprise and it is one of the first things we look for.

Because you will be dealing with them, and their record tells you what that will be like.

We work out which company or person actually owns it and link you to the public company record. Then we pull eviction filings and building code violations from the last two years, flag lawsuits worth knowing about, and look at how the managing company is spoken about. All public, all checkable, and much better known before you sign than after.

Believing an income number that was built on data counting blocked nights as booked nights, and forgetting the costs. Those two together explain most of it.

The third is skipping the legal check. A property that earns beautifully and is not allowed to operate is not a good deal, it is a fine waiting to be issued.

It is one of the 13 checks. Noise ruins reviews, and reviews are the whole business when you rent by the night.

A new hotel matters for a different reason: it caps what you can charge. We check the hotel prices within a mile for exactly that reason.

Very. Which is precisely why we look it up when you ask instead of shipping you a saved copy.

Rules change, listings die, new competitors appear. We also sweep the busy markets twice a week for rule changes and flag anything that would change a legal answer on a deal you were looking at.

Your first 3 checks are free, with no card and no time limit. After that it is $5 a check, or a monthly plan from $39 which bundles checks in and unlocks everything else.

The thorough deep report counts as five checks. Paying yearly works out at two months free. Credits you buy never expire, and you can stop any time. Every market is included and there is nobody you have to call.

Because people use this in two different ways. Somebody looking at one property this month should not pay a subscription for it. Somebody checking twenty a week should not pay per check.

So both exist and you can move between them. Nothing is hidden behind a sales call.

No. Three free checks, no card, no clock. Use them next year if you like.

We would rather you spent them on a property you are seriously considering than burned them this afternoon because a timer was running.

Your plan stops at the end of the period you paid for. Any credits you bought outright stay yours, because you bought them.

Your saved deals and reports stay in your account and you can still open and download them.

The three free checks are the trial, and the answer you get is the real one: a full verdict with the full report on each, not a preview with the good parts taken out.

Two honest caveats. They cover renting by the night, and the other strategies need a plan. And three checks are not enough to afford a deep report, which costs five, so if the deep report is the part you want to test, the cheapest way is a single top up rather than a plan.

Not on a plan you are already paying for without telling you first, in writing, with enough time to decide whether to stay.

Credits you have already bought are yours at the price you paid. A price change never reaches backwards into something you have already paid for.

A standard check comes back in minutes. A deep report takes longer because it is going out and shopping the real listings around the property, and you can close the tab and come back to it.

The United States and Canada work best. Mexico and parts of Europe also work.

Because we go and look things up for your address rather than relying on a saved list of cities, we are not limited to a handful of markets. Where a country reports money in its own currency we convert everything to US dollars at the point we read it, so you are never comparing two currencies by accident.

Yes. Drop in a PDF, a photo or an estate agent's brochure and we fill in each place we find in it. Run them and each one comes back as its own row with its own answer.

If we already looked something up recently we reuse it, so running a list again costs less rather than more.

Yes, straight from the browser, with no app store. On a computer it is one tap in Chrome or Edge. On an iPhone, tap Share and then Add to Home Screen.

It opens in its own window like any other app, and your account comes with it because it is the same account.

Yes. Connect it to Claude and ask Claude to check an address. It runs the same engine, uses the same credits, and returns the same numbers the website shows, to the dollar.

Checking a deal again from Claude reuses the same listings the website used, so the two can never tell you different things.

Tell us, with the address and the number you think is off. That is genuinely how most of this got built.

Every check links to its source, so if a figure looks wrong you can usually see why in one click, and if the source is wrong we want to know which one.