Buying an investment property can be one of most complicated, frustrating and risky things we can do with our money. The TPE property investment calculator allows you to do detailed analysis of the properties you are considering. Our calculator accounts for the various costs of buying and maintaining an investment property.
The output of this calculator displays various return metrics as well as break even occupancy rate.
You can use this tool as well as the Home Purchase tool to maximise your return.
We caution that international properties present challenges. Though the main transaction documents may be in English, you may find many documents are only in the local language. These include letters from the tax authorities and minutes from any home-owner association meetings. Further, the legal pitfalls of foreign buying are many. For example, many areas in Spain began requiring hotel like licenses for those listing on Airbnb and similar. Your humble founder was blocked from listing his apartment in Spain after the local municipality passed a law requiring such a license. And applying for one (which should have been easy) resulted in the TPE founder entering into a vortex of lawyers, Spanish documents and accountants. The lesson is that you not only have to worry about laws in existence when you buy, you need to consider future laws. And even in the US eviction rules vary widely and can mutate over time (particularly an issue for landlords during Covid). Finally, if you’re buying in a holiday area where short term rentals are the norm, you need to spend a lot of time understanding what the market is (price too high and you crush your occupancy rate and price too low, and you lose revenue and potentially get dodgy tenants.
It performs a detailed analysis of a potential investment property, accounting for the various costs of buying and maintaining it, and outputs return metrics along with the break-even occupancy rate needed to cover those costs.
It's the occupancy level a rental property needs to hit just to cover its costs — below that, the property loses money even before accounting for profit, making it a key number for judging whether a rental strategy is realistic.
Yes — the Home Purchase Tool helps you compare and evaluate specific properties, while this tool focuses on the investment-return side once you've identified a property you're considering.
Foreign purchases can involve legal and regulatory risks beyond the transaction itself — for example, local licensing requirements for short-term rentals can change after you buy, and key documents like tax notices or homeowner association minutes may only be available in the local language.
The Home Purchase Tool helps you compare specific properties on a qualitative and quantitative basis, and the Mortgage Refinance Calculator and House Affordability Calculator can help with the financing side.
