Christian OsgoodCEO, Multifamily Strategy · CEO at Multifamily Strategy

I Look at Two Things When It Comes to Rents

22 Jun 2026 · 2 min

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1:46

Christian Osgood benchmarks rental rates using Rentometer comps and current online listings, then averages them to estimate true market rent. He underwrites conservatively over five years but expects properties to stabilize in three, and projects interest rates around 6.5%.

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I'm just trying to benchmark. So I'll look at two things. I'll look at, I'll look at Rentometer. And this is a, the easiest way to look at rents. If you look at Rentometer, that's where rents have been. That's historic comps. And then I'll look for what's listed right now. That's telling me two things, what I'm competing with and what people are asking. Asking tends to be higher than actual because people negotiate and there's concessions. So when I look at, I assume that market rent is a little bit below what I'm seeing listed online, currently listed. And typically if rent's been trending upwards in a market, it's usually a little bit more than you're seeing on Rentometer. It's actually usually the higher end because Rentometer is the past, not the present. So if you combine those two and you come somewhere about in the middle, you have a very good idea where you're at today. And I'll underwrite towards getting to there in the 5-year period. That being said, stabilization does not take 5 years on a property. It just doesn't. There's no size building that takes 5 years to stabilize. So you could, you could stabilize 300 units in 3 years, just realistically. So I'm writing as like, hey, we have a stable property at today's market rent. What ends up happening is rents do tick up, we buy in great areas, and then it's like, oh, we look back and it's like, wow, we really undershot. This is typically what you do. But conservative underwriting, a very valid concern right now. Today's interest rates, I'm pretty much riding it flat. We're 6.5, we're a very middle-of-the-road interest rate. It's a good place to project, in my opinion, for your future value. Interest rates will probably be around the same. But there's no better way to say they'll be up or down because they're very mild and average. So I'm personally on my underwriting, I'm saying rates are most likely 6.5% in the future and maybe they trend down or maybe they trend up, but they should be around there. What I am more confident in is that I will definitely be doing better than my rent projections by the end of the deal.