About DealGauge

DealGauge builds honest, no-nonsense analysis tools for everyday real estate investors. Many quick calculators leave out the costs that decide whether a rental actually pays. DealGauge is built to include them, and to tell you plainly when a deal does not work, including when to walk away.

What we make

A free calculator that grades any rental deal, and a paid spreadsheet model with guides and research prompts that help buy-and-hold and short-term investors underwrite a property before they offer. Everything is a one-time download you own, built for Excel and Google Sheets. No subscriptions, no logins, no advice, just clear math you can audit yourself.

How the grade is calculated

The DealGauge grade is a transparent 0-to-100 score built from four things that actually decide whether a rental makes money:

Cash flow after every real expense, including vacancy, maintenance, capital expenditures, and management
Cash-on-cash return on the total cash you invest, reserves included
Debt coverage on the gross-rent basis lenders actually use. The stricter after-all-costs figure is shown alongside it but is not scored, because it repeats what cash flow and cash-on-cash already measure
Cap rate, measured net of a capital expenditure reserve, against a published 5% ceiling

In the paid model every threshold is yours to edit, so the grade reflects your buy box, not ours. Nothing is hidden: every formula is visible and every assumption is a labeled cell you can change.

Our one bias: toward caution. We use full reserves by default, we do not assume rents rise, and we show the after-tax picture without pretending you can always use paper losses. If a deal only works on optimism, our tools will say so.

Where our market data comes from

Our market reports summarize published, freely available third-party data, with the source and date shown on every figure. We draw on public releases such as the U.S. Census Bureau, HUD, the Federal Reserve (FRED), Freddie Mac's mortgage-rate survey, and public research indexes. We report figures as of a stated date. Where a figure would go stale faster than we can honestly maintain it, we remove it rather than leave it sitting there looking current, which is why you will not find a metro price-appreciation number anywhere on this site. We do not resell anyone's proprietary data.

The terms of a purchase

There is one paid product, the Investor Model, at $49 once. Thirty days, full refund, and you keep the files. Updates are free forever. No agent, lender or seller pays us, and we carry no affiliate links of any kind. If we find a defect in a file we sold, we say so on the methodology page, ship the fix free, and answer plainly at [email protected].

The limits of these tools

DealGauge is educational software, not advice. Every number it produces is an estimate based on the assumptions you enter, and estimates can be wrong. Real estate is local, cyclical, and full of details a spreadsheet cannot see. Always verify rents, expenses, taxes, and rules against primary local sources, and consult a qualified professional, an accountant, attorney, lender, or licensed agent, before you buy, sell, or finance any property.

The Investor Model went through a full audit before going back on sale. We found and fixed calculation defects across several rounds, then verified the corrected file against the free calculator deal for deal, and against an independent implementation of the published formulas. Everything we found is on the methodology page. We do not sell a file while we know something in it is wrong.

Calculator Why it's free Terms Privacy

General information and educational tools only, not investment, tax, or legal advice. DealGauge is not a broker, lender, appraiser, or advisor. Questions: [email protected]