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Housing Unpacked
Tools

Tools

Interactive versions of the calculations behind our analysis. Change the assumptions and watch the required rent move.

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Use these

Every figure is calculated in the browser from the assumptions shown on screen. Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere.

  • Rent impact

    What does this add to rent?

    Enter what a requirement costs and how many units carry it, and see the monthly rent per unit that cost has to produce. Change the interest rate or the term and watch the number move.

    Open the tool

Roadmap

In development

What we intend to build, described honestly and without a date attached.

  • Calculator

    The required-rent calculator

    The whole model rather than one line of it: development cost, financing, operating expenses, policy requirements and the return the equity has to earn, resolving to a required monthly rent and, for every variable you move, the impact of that change in dollars per month. The math it will run is the math already published in our methodology.

    In development

  • Data

    Required rent by market

    The same calculation run against construction costs, fees, tax burden, parking standards, approval times and interest rates as they actually are in specific metros, so the comparison between two cities is a comparison of inputs rather than of opinions. This one waits on the underlying data being collected and sourced properly.

    In development

Assumptions

The same model as the articles

Every tool here runs the same arithmetic as the analysis we publish, from the same file, against the same default assumptions: 65% LTC · 6.5% / 30 yr · 8% equity yield · 5% vacancy. Change a variable in a tool and you are changing it for that session only — the figures quoted in an article always state the assumptions the author used.

These are models of what a cost requires, not forecasts of what a market will pay. The reasoning, the sources and the limits of the method are set out in full in our methodology.