Calculate effective rental income after vacancy, turnover costs, and rent loss — the number lenders actually care about.
Free vacancy rate planner that separates physical from economic vacancy, layers in turnover costs, and shows the true effective income a lender would underwrite to.
Direct answers to the most common questions, in plain language. Skim if you're in a hurry; dig deeper below.
Market norm is 5–10%. Underwrite at 7–10% to be safe.
Most residential markets run between 5% and 10% vacancy depending on city, asset class, and seasonality. Lenders and conservative investors typically underwrite at 7–10% even in tight markets, because turnover, repairs, and listing time are real costs that wishful 0% pro formas ignore.
Physical = empty days. Economic = empty days + turnover costs + concessions.
Physical vacancy is the percentage of days a unit sits empty. Economic vacancy is broader: it folds in lost rent during turnover, paint and cleaning costs, marketing spend, and any move-in concessions. Two properties can have the same physical vacancy but very different economic vacancies — that's the number that actually shows up in your bank account.
They are pricing in the bad year, not the average year.
Lenders are sizing debt for the trough, not the peak. A 7–10% vacancy assumption gives them margin against a soft rental market, a problem tenant, or a slow turnover. Use the same lens when underwriting your own deal — if it cash flows at 10% vacancy, it almost certainly cash flows at 5%.
Often $1,500–$3,000 per unit once you count lost rent.
A typical residential turnover runs $400–$900 for paint and cleaning, $100–$400 for marketing and screening, plus 2–4 weeks of lost rent at the unit's market rate. Stack those and the all-in cost of "just one turnover" is frequently $1,500–$3,000 — which is why longer leases at slightly below-market rent often beat short leases at peak rent.
The mechanics in short answers — no jargon, no upsell.
Gross potential income (GPI) is what the property would earn at 100% occupancy: monthly rent × units × 12. It is the ceiling, never the reality.
Apply the vacancy rate — the percentage of rent lost to unoccupied days. Effective income = GPI × (1 − vacancy%). This is the standard "vacancy and credit loss" line on any pro forma.
Every move-out triggers paint, cleaning, marketing, and screening. Turnover cost × units × turnovers-per-year is a recurring annual drag that physical vacancy alone hides.
Pull turnover costs out of effective income and divide by GPI to get economic vacancy. That percentage — usually 2–4 points worse than physical vacancy — is the number that actually shows up in NOI.
Designed so anyone can model their situation in under a minute, with or without a finance background.
Stop using a single physical-vacancy number — see the real drag from turnover and lost rent combined.
Stress-test your pro forma at the same 7–10% vacancy your bank assumes. If it works there, it works.
Side-by-side view of low (3%), market (8%), and conservative (12%) vacancy to bound your downside.
Quantify the true cost of each move-out so you know what a long-stay tenant is actually worth.
Decide between holding rent for tenant retention or pushing it and accepting more vacancy.
Walk into a financing or partner conversation with effective-income math nobody can poke holes in.
Everything you might ask before, during, or after using this tool.
Vacancy rate (or physical vacancy) measures the percentage of days a unit is empty. Economic vacancy is more honest — it captures lost rent plus turnover costs, concessions, and credit losses. Economic vacancy is usually 2–4 percentage points higher than physical vacancy for the same property, and it is the number that determines true cash flow.
For most US residential markets, use 7–8% as a baseline. Use 5% only if you have multi-year direct evidence of sub-5% vacancy in that submarket. Use 10–12% for new-build lease-ups, secondary markets, student rentals, or anything with seasonal demand. The point of underwriting is not to predict the average year — it is to make sure the bad year still works.
Yes. Most simple vacancy calculators stop at GPI × (1 − vacancy%) and call it a day. This one layers in per-unit turnover cost (paint, cleaning, marketing, screening) multiplied by your turnover frequency, then surfaces an economic vacancy rate that reflects the full drag.
Three levers move the needle: (1) price slightly below market to attract longer-stay tenants — a 3% rent discount that doubles your average tenancy is usually a win; (2) screen and respond fast — every day a unit is vacant is a full day of lost rent that you never recover; (3) renew aggressively — a renewal at flat or +3% almost always beats a new tenant at +6% once turnover costs are counted.
It depends on turnover cost and the spread. If you push rent by 5% and lose 4 weeks to vacancy plus $2,000 in turnover, you usually lose money in year one and break even in year two. If you push rent by 3% and the tenant renews anyway, that's pure margin. Run both scenarios with this calculator before deciding.
In hot markets, 7–14 days for a clean unit with a strong listing. In normal markets, 21–30 days. In slow or seasonal markets, 30–60 days. The "average days to fill" input lets you stress-test this directly — increase it and watch effective income drop.
Yes — heavily. When you apply for a DSCR loan or any commercial mortgage on rental property, the lender will substitute your vacancy assumption with theirs, usually 7–10%. If your DSCR only works at 0% vacancy, you don't have a financeable deal. Underwriting at the lender's number from day one saves you from a surprise re-trade.
Hugely, especially on small portfolios. A 24-month lease at market rent typically beats a 12-month lease at +4% rent once you count one avoided turnover ($1,500–$3,000) and one month of saved vacancy. The math flips only when rent growth is so strong that even a single year of locked-in rent has a real opportunity cost.
Other Lazysmirk tools that pair well with this one.
Underwrite any rental — cash flow, cap rate, cash-on-cash, and ROI in seconds.
Calculate the capitalization rate on any rental or commercial property. See your unleveraged yield, compare against 2026 market benchmarks, and price deals like a pro.
Calculate Net Operating Income (NOI), cap rate, and expense ratio for any rental property. The property-level number lenders, appraisers, and serious buyers underwrite to.
Calculate true cash-on-cash return on a rental property — the metric every investor uses to compare deals at a glance.
Calculate gross yield, net yield, and cap rate on a rental property — with realistic expense lines for tax, insurance, vacancy, and capex.
Project monthly net cash flow from an Airbnb listing — nightly rate, occupancy, cleaning, mortgage, fees, and management — with a solved break-even occupancy.
Calculate Debt Service Coverage Ratio for investment property loans, with NOI, cap rate, and lender tier in one view.
Most beginner pro formas pick a vacancy number out of the air — 5% feels right, write it down, move on. The problem is that 5% is usually a physical-vacancy figure, which measures empty days as a share of total days. It says nothing about what happens during a move-out.
Economic vacancy folds in everything that erodes your rent roll: lost rent during turnover, paint and cleaning, marketing, screening, and any move-in concessions or first-month-free deals you offered. For the same property, economic vacancy is almost always 2–4 percentage points higher than physical vacancy. Run the calculator above and you can see the gap directly.
Across the US, residential vacancy generally runs between 5% and 10%, with most stabilized properties in the 6–8% band. Hot markets like Austin and Boise have dipped below 4% during bull cycles; secondary markets and college towns regularly run 10–12% during the summer.
Use these as a starting point, not a target. Your actual number depends on asset class (Class A apartments turn over faster than Class C), management style (responsive landlords lose fewer days), and pricing strategy (push rent and you push vacancy too). The "8% market" preset in the calculator is a defensible midpoint when you have no other data.
A common mistake is treating turnover as free because it only happens between tenants. It is not free. A typical single-family or apartment turnover involves paint ($300–$600), deep cleaning ($150–$300), marketing and screening ($100–$300), and minor repairs ($200–$500). Bundle those with 2–4 weeks of empty rent and the all-in cost easily clears $1,500–$3,000.
That number changes how you think about everything else. A tenant who renews at flat rent for a second year is saving you the entire turnover cost — easily worth a 2–3% rent concession to keep them. The "annual turnover per unit" slider in the calculator lets you see this directly: drop it from 1.0 to 0.5 and watch true effective income jump.
When a bank or DSCR lender sizes your loan, they don't trust your 3% pro forma vacancy. They substitute their own — typically 7% for stabilized residential, 10% for newer or non-stabilized assets. They are not being pessimistic; they are pricing in the trough year of the cycle when sizing debt that has to survive 10 to 30 years.
Adopt the lender's lens from day one. Build your initial model at 7–10% vacancy, not the 3% you saw at the top of a hot rental cycle. If the deal cash flows at the lender's number, you have a financeable, durable property. If it only works at sub-5%, you have a thesis, not a deal.
Two short notes worth reading before you trust any number on this page.
Your loan amount, rate, and prepayment inputs never leave your device. No accounts, no cookies on your numbers, no analytics on the values you type. Disconnect from the internet and it still works.
We are not a bank, NBFC, advisor, broker, or distributor of any financial product. The numbers shown here are estimates for educational purposes only, based on the inputs you provide.
Results are not financial, legal, or tax advice. Please consult a qualified professional before any decision about your loan, investments, or personal finances. Actual loan terms and charges depend on your bank and individual circumstances.
