A rent roll is the list of every unit, who occupies it, what they are contracted to pay and what they actually paid. It is the single document a lender, a buyer or an owner reads to understand a property, and it is usually the first thing that reveals whether the records behind it are any good. This page is about what belongs on one and what a reader checks first.
The columns
Unit, tenant, lease start and end, contracted rent, deposit held, current balance, and the date the figures were taken as at. The last one is not decoration: a rent roll without an as-at date cannot be reconciled against anything, and the first question a careful reader asks is which day this is a picture of. Vacant units belong on it too, with the asking rent, because a roll that lists only occupied units overstates the property.
Contracted rent and collected rent are different columns
Contracted rent is what the lease says. Collected rent is what arrived. Rolls that show only the first are describing an intention, and the gap between the two is exactly what a lender is trying to price. Showing both, with the current balance beside them, is more persuasive than showing the flattering one, because it demonstrates the records exist rather than asking to be believed.
The four things a reader checks first
Whether the lease end dates cluster, because a building whose leases all end in the same month has a concentrated risk. Whether any rent is markedly below the others, which usually means a legacy tenancy or a concession nobody recorded. Whether deposits held look consistent with the rents. And whether the balances are mostly zero. Those four take a reader about a minute and tell them how much diligence the rest of the file needs.
It should be produced, not assembled
A rent roll assembled by hand from a spreadsheet once a quarter is out of date when it is finished and disagrees with the ledger it was copied from. Produced from the record it is current by construction, and it agrees with the rent ledger and with any estoppel certificates by construction too, because all three are drawn from the same rows. That is the difference this product is for.
Questions people ask about rent roll
How often should a rent roll be produced?
Monthly for your own use, and on the day it is asked for when someone else needs it. The point is that producing one should be a query, not a project.
Should the rent roll include the deposit?
Yes. A buyer inherits the deposit liability, and a roll without it understates what they are taking on.
What about units occupied by an owner or staff?
List them with a zero or discounted rent and a note saying why. Omitting them makes the unit count disagree with the building, which is the sort of small inconsistency that costs credibility.