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.
Wisconsin guide
Wisconsin is the state that makes the Midwest case honestly, and it does so for a reason nobody expects: insurance.
The average Wisconsin homeowners premium is $1,680 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage. That is the lowest of the seven Midwest states in this set — $1,226 below Iowa's $2,906, roughly a third of Kansas's $4,868, and only 6.09% of gross rent on the worked example below. In a series where insurance repeatedly turns out to be the line that breaks a deal, Wisconsin is the control group.
The tradeoff is on the other side of the ledger. Wisconsin has the second-highest median sale price in this set at $358,877, and a 1.28% effective property tax rate that produces a $4,593.63 annual bill — 2.73 times the insurance premium and 16.64% of gross rent. Wisconsin is a property-tax state, not an insurance state.
Net result: the best cap rate on a state median in this Midwest set — 3.85% — and still a -$639.11 monthly cash flow at 25% down and 7.00%. That is worth sitting with. Wisconsin is where the Midwest thesis works best, and at 2026 financing costs the median house still does not carry itself.
A note before you start: this is general educational information about how rental property arithmetic works in Wisconsin. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation about any property. Wisconsin property tax is levied by municipality and school district with wide local variation, and insurance is priced per structure — Wisconsin's rating territories are unusually granular, with every city and locality carrying a fire protection classification from 1 to 10. Talk to a Wisconsin CPA about tax treatment, a licensed Wisconsin insurance agent about a real quote, and a Wisconsin real estate attorney about anything contractual.
Read the full Wisconsin guide →23 min read · Updated 2026-08-28