How Much Cash Flow Should Your Rentals Make?

0:00How much cash flow should your rental actually make? because it may sound great if a property will cash flow 200 bucks a month, but if you have to invest 100 grand to buy that deal, that's a bad deal. So today I'll explain how to think about cash flow like an experienced investor, how to calculate the number correctly, how to decide what your minimum cash flow target should be. I'll walk you through a simple deal example and explain why cash on cash return matters much more than the raw dollar amount you're earning. And I'll give you my take on how to adjust your cash flow analysis for the 2026 market.

0:33And I'm just going to go ahead right now and spoil this entire episode and say that my answer is 7%. I want a 7 % cash on cash return by year two for any property I buy right now. But that is just my number. Yours is going to be different. And by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to calculate your number. So if you want to stop guessing about IRRs and cap rates and start evaluating deals that will build your net worth, You can't miss this episode.

1:07What's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at BiggerPockets, and a guy who has literally analyzed thousands, I don't know, maybe tens of thousands of real estate deals. And today, I'm sharing how I think about cashflow as I continue to buy residential properties in 2026. We're gonna start today by just defining cashflow for anyone who is new around here or for people who are confused on how to calculate it because there's a lot of bad information out there about what is cashflow. The proper definition of cashflow is taking your total income, so that's all of your rent for a specific property, and then subtracting all of your expenses.

1:49That does include your mortgage. It includes taxes and insurance, but it also includes some of those variable expenses like repairs, maintenance, vacancy, turnover costs. All that has to be calculated before you figure out cash flow. There are a lot of videos out there and people out there who say cash flow is just taking your rent and subtracting your mortgage payment. That is not correct. And that is not the cash flow that we are talking about in this episode. We're talking about real cash flow here. So keep that in mind as we go on. Because if you hear people say, I'm getting a 10 or 15 % cash on cash return, Honestly, I don't think it's that they're getting good deals.

2:28I think that they're actually calculating it wrong. So make sure that you're doing this right and you keep your expectations appropriate to the right number and the right way of calculating it. So now that we know what cash flow is, how do you go about measuring this? Because you can measure it in two different ways. The first way is the absolute amount. Just how much money are you making each month per unit or per property? You hear a lot of people say, I want to get at least$100 per door in cash flow. Now, that is valuable. There is use to that. But that's actually not the way that I recommend you think about cash flow.

3:02Instead, I recommend you think about your rate of return. So rather than the total amount of dollars, I want you to measure how efficiently your dollars are earning cash flow. And to do that, you use a metric called cash on cash return. It's really easy to calculate. all you have to do is take the total amount of cash flow and divide it by the total amount of money that you put into that property. So just as an example, if you're making 500 bucks a month in cash flow, that's$6 ,000 a year, and you divide that by 100 grand that you invested into this property, that's a 6 % cash on cash return. And the reason I like measuring this is because as an investor, one of your main jobs is to figure out a way to use your money most efficiently because most of us don't have unlimited, amounts of capital to just keep going by property and property and property.

3:54So you need a measure of efficiency to make sure, hey, if I'm going to go buy a property, this is the best use of my money. And that's why you need to use cash on cash return, your rate of return, rather than your absolute return. Just as a sort of extreme investment, right? You might say, I'm getting 500 bucks a month. Again, we'll use that as our example. That's$6 ,000 a year in cash flow. If you invested$100 ,000, 6 % cash on cash return, that's pretty good. That's a pretty good cash on cash return right now. But if you invested, say,$500 ,000 to earn that$6 ,000 a year in profit, that's just over a 1 % cash on cash return, which is not very good.

4:32You could do better in a savings account. So it's not really worth your time or money to make that investment. So that's why we use the rate of return. And for those of you out there who may be math averse or don't memorize the formula I just mentioned. I don't blame you, first of all. But that's why at BiggerPockets, we provide tools that will calculate these things for you. You can go to biggerpockets.com slash pro and use our calculators, and they can give you all of this information. So during this episode, just concentrate more on the principles of understanding what these numbers mean. So when you go and use the calculators, you understand how to interpret the numbers that are in front of you.

5:10All right, So we got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back talking more about how much cash flow your rentals will make right after this. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios, but it's also historically been sort of complex, time consuming and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy. All the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund. Now you can invest in a$1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as$10. The portfolio features 4 ,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt.

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8:32Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. Today, we're talking about how much cash flow your rental should make. Let's jump back in. So with that said, that brings us back to our original question. How much cash flow should your rental make? And I want to be clear when I explain my number and what your number should be, that I am not necessarily talking about day one cash flow. You'll probably hear a lot of investors talk about this day one cash flow, walking cash flow. That's the idea that if you go out and buy a property on the MLS, off market, whatever, the day that the person hands over the keys to you, you're happily the owner of this new property that you're going to be earning 3 % or 5 % or 10 % cash flow.

9:15Now, of course, if you can get cash flow on day one, that's awesome. But the realities of the market in 2026 are that it's pretty hard to find great cash flowing deals on the market with day one cash flow. So when I think about cash flow, what I am thinking about is what is known as the stabilized cash flow. This is a term that real estate investors use to describe the period after they've executed their business plan and get the property to the state that it should be in. because as an investor, what you're likely doing in today's market, the better deals that you can buy are places where one, you go and buy a duplex, let's say, and it's been owned by someone who's owned it for 20 years and they haven't really kept up with market rents.

10:00And so you buy that property and you bring those rents up to fair market value. That's stabilization, right? That could be part of your business plan. You're getting it to be fair for what the market would bear. The other way that you do this and is very common is through value add. So you buy a property that maybe has low rents because it's not a great property. It's not in good condition. It is not meeting the demands of the market right now. So you go out and renovate it. You add a new kitchen, you add a new bathroom, you put in new floors, you throw some paint in there. And then all of a sudden your rents go from a thousand bucks a month to 1500 bucks a month.

10:33And your cash flow goes from, let's say, 2 % cash on cash return up to 8 % cash on cash return. So when I spoiled my answer before and said that my number right now that I'm looking for is 7 % cash on cash return, I'm talking about stabilized. I'm not expecting 7 % the day I go out and buy that property. I'm expecting it by the time I have gotten my business plan into place. Usually I try to do that within a year, but it can take 18 months if you're doing a slow burr or something like that. But my metric for cash flow is a 7 % cash on cash return by stabilization. Now, if you're wondering why 7%, there's two reasons.

11:14First and foremost, you have to think about what else you can be doing with your money right now. I have to get returns that are better than my other options out there. I need to beat the stock market. I don't know if I'll beat crypto in any given year, but I want to beat the average for any other asset class out there. Historically, the stock market, which I think is the main asset class you should be comparing to, returns 8 % to 10%. Depends on who you ask, if you reinvest your dividends, a lot of stuff like that. But 8 % to 10 % is a pretty good rule of thumb. Now, real estate offers many ways of generating returns that aren't just cash flow.

11:51But the way I think about it is if I can get a 7 % cash on cash return, my loan paydown amortization is usually getting me 3 % return just doing that. Then the tax benefits that I get are probably getting me at least a 2 % return. So for me, if I get that 7 % cash on cash return, I know I am getting at least a 12 % annualized return, which is significantly better than the stock market. And if you're thinking that's not that big of a difference, the difference between 8 % and 12%. What does that matter? I should go out and buy the stock market because 8%, I don't have to do anything. And yes, for rental property investing, you're going to have to work to get that 12%.

12:32But let me just give you a quick example here. If you invest at 8 % return, if you take$100 ,000 invested in an 8 % return over 20 years compounded, you're going to have $466 ,000 at the end of those 20 years. That's pretty great. You're making 450 % on your money over that time. But if you invested at 12%, just the difference between 8 % and 12%, you will actually have$964 ,000, nine and a half times your money. That is double what you get at 8%. That is the power of compounding. When you are compounding your investments, small differences in your rate of return make huge differences over the long run.

13:16And so for me, that's why my minimum total annualized return is 12%. And if I can get a 7 % cash on cash return, I know I can hit that 12%. So that's the primary reason. The second reason, and I won't get into all the details here, but I basically want my cash on cash return to be higher than the interest rate on my loan. And I can get six and a quarter, six and a half right now on investor loans. And so if I can get 7 % cash on cash return, that's better than my interest rate. And I really like that. So 7 % is the number I am looking for. But I got to admit, sometimes I buy deals with less cash flow.

13:52Sometimes I buy deals with more. Because it comes down to your personal strategy and where you are in your investing career. And after this break, I'm going to show you how you can calculate your cash flow number. So stick with us. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy. All the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund. Now you can invest in a$1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as$10.

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17:37Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer talking about how much cash flow should your rental make. I shared before the break what cash flow is, how to use cash on cash return rather than the absolute number as your main metric for calculating cash flow, and why generally speaking, I try to achieve 7 % stabilized cash flow for the deals that I buy. But the truth is I don't get 7 % on every single deal. Sometimes it's a little bit less. Sometimes it's a little bit more because there's this kind of reality that exists in real estate, which is that cash flow and appreciation are a trade-off.

18:17In markets or in properties where you're going to get the most possible cash flow, they're typically in areas or their properties that are not going to appreciate as much. That's not always true, but that is a good thing to keep in mind as you think about these questions. If you want maximum appreciation, then you're probably going to get less cash flow. Just think about markets that have appreciated a lot over the last couple of decades. COVID was different. But if you think about San Francisco or Austin, Texas or Denver or Nashville, those are places where you've seen massive appreciation. Cash flow there, harder to get.

18:53But they have great economies. Property values are probably going to keep going up. Maybe not this year, but long term, those are markets where you're going to see good property appreciation. And so you have to think about what is more important to you at this stage in your life, appreciation or cash flow. Again, earlier in your career, I would generally say appreciation. Later in your career, cash flow. Now, I have said this a lot when I talk about the great stall and the upside era. I do not buy properties that do not cash flow. So even though I just said all that about appreciation, I do not think in this kind of market that it is prudent to buy anything that is not cash flowing.

19:30The primary strategy that works right now in this era is buying and holding on for a long time. And even though cash flow is probably not the best way to build your net worth over the next 20 years, holding on to those properties is. And cash flow is the way you ensure you hold on to your properties. Because if you buy a property that's negative 200 bucks a month cash flow and you say, hey, I got a good job, I could foot the bill, I'll pay that out of pocket. Sure. But if you lose your job, you might be tempted to sell that property. And with the transaction costs in real estate, you're often selling at a loss, even if your property value stays the same because you have to pay out your agents and commissions and taxes and all that.

20:12And so the key to succeeding in the upside era is holding on to these rental properties for a long period of time. And cash flow allows you to be really defensive. So I buy for stabilized cash flow always. I buy some deals that are negative cash flow the day I buy them. That's actually quite common. There are a lot of times day one cash flow is negative, but I have to have a plan in place to stabilize that property 12 to 18 months from now, and I'm going to have positive cash flow. So when you're thinking about these trade-offs between cash flow and appreciation, I like to think of it as a spectrum.

20:49Whereas if there is a property that is amazing upside, right? We talk about the upsides on the show all the time. Maybe it has great rent growth potential. Maybe it's in the path of progress. There's zoning upside. If it has a lot of upside, I'll take a lower cash on cash return. I would actually take a cash on cash return as low as 3 % if I think there's really good upside. It's in an amazing neighborhood. There's a ton of investment going on around this property. I've done this several times in my career, and they've been some of the best deals I've ever bought because I'm not focused on cash.

21:22So I'm thinking this is a great opportunity to build equity, to build my net worth. But I've got this 3 % cash on cash return that ensures that even if it takes three or four or five years for those upsides to hit, that I can still hold on to this property and I'm still making a decent return. Now, on the other side of the spectrum, if there's a property with limited upside, maybe it's in a well-established neighborhood that's not really changing that much. Rents are probably not going to grow. it's just kind of a solid asset, but there's not as much excitement around what the future holds, then I need a much higher cash on cash return.

22:00So I think at least an 8 % stabilized cash on cash return there, maybe ideally even higher cash on cash return for that kind of deal. And I suggest that this is the way that you think about your own numbers. So again, first, you're thinking about your own goals and whether you want to favor appreciation or cash flow. And then when you're evaluating any individual deal, you have to think about, why am I doing this? If I'm buying it just for cashflow, that's totally fine. But if you're young in your career and you're saying, I'm just trying to build my net worth now so that I can get cashflow 10, 15 years from now, then you might take that lower cashflow deal if it's in a great neighborhood.

22:36Just make sure that those upsides are actually there, that you're going to be able to do value add, that you're going to be in the path of progress. Maybe there's that zoning upside. Maybe you think rents are going to go up. If all those things are there, you can take a lower cash on cash return today. So that's how you figure out your own number. And before we go, there's just one other thing that I think is really important. I try to mention a lot on this show, but I do think is super important in today's day and age. I always, from the first day that I started as a real estate investor, 16 years ago until today, I underwrite pessimistically.

23:10I don't like looking at best case scenarios, putting that in the BiggerPockets calculator, and then hoping those things turn out. That is not what you should do. I know it's exciting to think you're in this great neighborhood and rents are going to go up, but what if they don't? I really recommend to you to underwrite in the worst case scenario. Don't assume rents are going to go to the top of the market. Don't assume amazing appreciation. Make sure to take into account that your taxes and your insurance and your expenses are probably going to go up because this is the way to protect yourself in today's day and age.

23:45And I know there are people out there saying this property is going to get a 12 % cash on cash return, but their assumptions are very optimistic. They are a little bit, I would say, speculative. Personally, I know this sounds crazy, but I would rather take a 5 % cash on cash return deal that I underwrite pessimistically than a 12 % cash on cash return that an agent or a wholesaler or someone else is saying that I can get. I just think that's the prudent thing to do. So my last two pieces of advice to you, one, calculate your cash flow properly. Do not omit any expenses in there. And number two, be very careful about the assumptions you put into the calculator because the BiggerPockets calculator, it'll do the math right for you.