Run the numbers on a Washington rental before you own it.

No one can promise you a rental return, and that includes me. Rents move. Tenants give notice. Roofs fail on their own schedule, and interest rates change between the day you tour a house and the day you lock a loan.

What can be done is the math, carefully, before you commit. Every analysis starts from conservative assumptions and shows its work line by line, including where the figures are soft. If a property only works when everything goes right, you should know that before you are under contract, when walking away still costs nothing.

Analysis before an offer

Send me the property. I underwrite that one building: the rent its units should command against comparable leases nearby, and the expenses a real owner pays, run through the financing you expect to use. You get the figures and the reasoning behind each one, so you can change any number you disagree with and see what happens.

Finding rental-friendly property

Some houses are easy to rent and easy to keep rented. Others look fine in listing photos and turn into a slow drain: a shared driveway that becomes a neighbor dispute, a basement that takes water every February, a condo association that caps how many units may be rented. Part of the work is screening for those problems before anyone falls for the kitchen.

Representation on the purchase

When you are ready to buy, I represent you as a licensed broker with LPT Realty, or introduce you to a licensed agent in the Homexa® network who works in that area. Homexa is a network of more than 300 agents across 25 states. That matters most when the property is in Spokane or Kennewick and you live on the west side of the Cascades.

You send the property

An address or a listing link is enough. If you are earlier than that, send the area and the kind of building you have in mind: a single-family house in South Tacoma, a duplex near Gonzaga, a newer townhouse on Kent’s East Hill, a fourplex in central Kennewick.

Rent is estimated from comparables

I look at what similar units nearby have leased for, adjusting for bedrooms, parking, laundry, yard and condition. Asking rents are a starting point. Signed leases are better evidence, and they get more weight.

Expenses are itemized

Property tax from the county assessor’s record. A realistic insurance figure for the building’s type and age. Utilities the owner pays. A repair allowance, plus a separate reserve for big-ticket items like roofs and water heaters. Management at a market fee, even if you plan to manage the place yourself, because your evenings are worth something.

Financing is modeled

The numbers run on the loan you expect to use: owner-occupied or investor, the down payment you plan, and a rate from your lender. I am not a lender and I do not quote rates. I use yours, and I show what changes if it moves.

You get it in writing

A short written summary with the table, the assumptions, the weak spots and my honest read. Then a call, if you want one. Some analyses end with an offer. Plenty end with a decision to pass, and that is a perfectly good use of an afternoon.

Most requests involve five places, and they are very different rental markets. Tacoma and Kent are close-in Puget Sound cities with commuter rail and a lot of older housing. Auburn sits between them on SR 167 and straddles the King and Pierce county line. Spokane runs on a separate economy across the Cascades, with brick walk-ups near downtown and student rentals in Logan, next to Gonzaga. Kennewick is in a desert river valley, with newer subdivisions and summers that are hard on air conditioners.

The markets page describes each one for a rental buyer, without statistics. For a specific property, the analysis uses current data.