Financials & Underwriting
Financials is where you underwrite a property. It lives on the property detail panel, under Financials, and it answers one question in several ways: what does this deal actually return?
How it is organised
Four things nest, and knowing the order makes the rest obvious.
Property → Deal → Version → Scenarios.
A property can be underwritten on its own, or against a specific deal. Each of those is a group, and a group holds versions. A version holds the scenarios you compare side by side — Current, Pro-Forma, and any others you add.
A version is a set of numbers you name and keep: "July 2026", then "October 2026" when the owner sends a new rent roll. The previous version keeps its figures untouched, which is what lets a document you sent against it still reconcile months later.
Versions
The dropdown at the top left of Comparison switches between versions. It shows the one you are looking at, and marks anything that is not the version being edited as Past.
Click Versions to see the full list, create a new one, or duplicate an old one.
- New version carries every scenario, every rent, every expense and the capital stack across, then becomes the version you are editing. Start one when the underlying figures change, not when you tweak a number.
- Duplicate does the same from an older version rather than the current one — "start again from what we underwrote in July" without retyping it.
Past versions stay editable. Nothing stops you correcting an old set of numbers, so be deliberate about which one is on screen.
Scenarios
Scenarios are the columns. Each is a complete set of inputs — rents, expenses, assumptions, capital stack — so Current and Pro-Forma differ in whatever way you decide, not in a fixed way the software imposes.
Use Manage Scenarios to add, rename or remove them. Every scenario in a version moves together: they share a rent roll structure and are compared on the same basis.
The sub-tabs beside Comparison are where the inputs live:
- Rent Roll — unit-by-unit rents, per scenario
- Other Income — parking, laundry, storage, anything not unit rent
- Expenses — operating expenses, with reimbursable ones flagged
- Construction — capital budget for a value-add or ground-up
The capital stack
Each scenario has its own capital stack, ordered by seniority — the top layer is repaid first. Click Edit stack in the Capital Stack row of the comparison table.
Five kinds of layer:
| Layer | What it is |
|---|---|
| Senior debt | The first mortgage |
| Mezzanine | Subordinate debt, repaid after the senior |
| Preferred equity | Equity with a fixed return ahead of common |
| LP equity | The limited partners' money |
| GP equity | The sponsor's own money |
Debt layers take an amount, a rate, an amortisation term and an interest-only flag. Equity layers take a share of the equity and a preferred return, and one of them is marked as taking the promote — normally the GP.
The stack belongs to the scenario, deliberately. "70% LTV" and "60% LTV" are two scenarios you compare side by side, which is impossible if the financing is attached to the property and shared between them.
A scenario with no layers is an all-cash purchase, and the metrics say so.
The promote
Below the stack, Promote sets the waterfall — the hurdles above which the sponsor earns more than its capital share.
Add a hurdle with a target IRR and the split above it. A single hurdle expresses the ordinary arrangement: 8% preferred return, then 80/20. Add more for a tiered promote — 8% then 80/20, 12% then 70/30, 15% then 60/40.
Two things worth knowing about how it is calculated:
- Capital and preferred return come first. Every dollar of equity is returned, and the preferred return paid, before any promote is earned.
- Each hurdle governs only its own band. A tiered promote is not one split applied to everything above the first hurdle. The 12% tier applies to the money that carries investors from 8% to 12%, and no further.
The preferred return accrues on what is still outstanding, so a distribution in year two reduces what compounds in year three.
Reading the comparison
Sections run down the table in the order you would read a deal.
Assumptions — purchase price, costs, growth rates, vacancy, hold period and exit cap rate.
Income through to Net Operating Income — the operating statement.
Capital Stack — how each scenario is funded.
Cash Flow — debt service and what the deal actually pays.
Key Metrics — the ratios:
- Cap rate — NOI over the purchase price
- Return on cost — NOI over every dollar invested, including construction and closing costs. On a value-add deal this is the number cap rate cannot tell you
- IRR and Equity Multiple — the return over the whole hold
- Cash-on-cash — the first year's cash flow against the equity
- DSCR — how many times NOI covers debt service
Partner Returns — LP and GP IRR, each side's equity multiple, and the promote in dollars. This section appears only when a scenario has equity layers to split between.
Calculating
Figures are computed from the inputs and stored. The projection runs across the hold period, so IRR and equity multiple reflect every year, not just the first.
A blank IRR is not an error. A deal that never distributes cash has no rate of return to solve for, and showing a number there would be worse than showing nothing.
The AI can do this too
Ask the assistant to underwrite a property, build a pro-forma from a rent roll you have uploaded, or compare two scenarios and tell you which is better and why. It reads the same figures the comparison table shows and writes into the same scenarios, so anything it produces is yours to edit afterwards.