Cap rate, real cash flow, and return on the cash you put in — including the expenses most analyses leave out. Estimate only, not investment advice.
Estimates only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. How we calculate every figure
Estimated all-in monthly payment for a home price you have in mind.
What homeowners insurance costs in your state, and whether what you pay is out of line.
Income, savings, and debts in — max home price and qualification signal out.
A rental bought for $300,000 and sold seven years later for $394,780 nets $158,925 at closing — and owes about $24,753 of federal tax, $15,273 of it on depreciation you were required to take. Here is the math, why a sale with zero appreciation still owes tax, and the three clocks a fourth-quarter sale starts.
A leveraged rental makes money three ways and cash flow is only one of them. Here is what the other two are worth — and why the structure that maximises them is a bet, not a plan.
How to verify one specific rental deal: audit the seller's pro-forma line by line, comp a real rent, reassess the tax, age the systems, and price the offer the numbers actually support.
Set up basis correctly, claim the depreciation you are owed, survive the passive-loss rules, and know what the sale will cost — with every figure tied to the statute.
Michigan guide
Michigan is the state in this set where the most important number is not on the listing.
The statewide median sale price is $299,900. Michigan rebuild cost runs about $230 per square foot. Multiply that out on a modest 1,500 square foot house and you get $345,000 — 15.04% more than the median house sells for. On an 1,800 square foot house it is $414,000, or 38.05% above the median price. In Wayne County, where the median is $224,327, that same 1,500 square foot rebuild is 53.79% above the purchase price.
For a landlord this is not a curiosity. It is the difference between a total loss being covered and a total loss being an unfunded liability. The purchase price does not set your dwelling limit. Rebuild cost does, and in Michigan the two have come apart.
The second Michigan-specific thing to know is that the tax bill on the listing is probably not the tax bill you will pay. Michigan caps annual growth in taxable value for a continuing owner, and that cap comes off the year after a transfer. Section 2 is about both.
A note before you start: this is general educational information about how rental property arithmetic works in Michigan. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation about any property. Michigan property tax is administered by local assessing units with millage rates that vary sharply between neighboring jurisdictions, and insurance is priced per structure. Talk to a Michigan CPA about tax treatment, a licensed Michigan insurance agent about a real quote, and a Michigan real estate attorney about anything contractual.
The statewide median sale price is $299,900 (Houzeo, live Realcomp MLS data, up 3.41% year over year).
Read the full Michigan guide →22 min read · Updated 2026-08-28