The seven checks I run before I will spend real time on a deal — and the one that is not on the list. Written for people who have to defend the number, not just quote it.
Every one of these maps to a number you can independently verify. None of them require a tool you do not already have.
Trailing-3 annualized against trailing-12, tied back to bank statements and the rent roll — with a market management fee added back on a self-managed seller.
Economic versus physical occupancy, delinquency aging, pre-sale lease waves, and the rollover cliff hiding behind a clean-looking roll.
Reassessment at your purchase price, a live insurance quote instead of the trailing premium, and per-unit submarket benchmarking instead of the phantom 40%.
Renovated comps within a mile, modeled downtime and absorption, and the halve-the-premium stress test.
Exit at or above entry, plus roughly 10 bps for every year of hold — then stressed another 50 to 100.
Model at the capped strike, check cap expiry and replacement cost, stress the refinance, and test DSCR fully amortizing.
A 10–15% contingency floor on hard costs, and capital that is committed rather than merely available.
There are seven checks in this guide. The biggest red flag of all is not having coaching, teaching, or mentoring to help you use them. A checklist tells you where a deal breaks. It does not tell you what to do about it at eleven o'clock the night before the LOI is due. That is what a coach is for.
Active multifamily sponsor and underwriter. Builder of Ironclad Underwriting. Host of the Ironclad Underwriting Podcast.
I underwrite the deals I actually buy, with my own money in them. These seven checks are not theory — they are the triage I run before I will spend real time on a deal, and they are the same logic the Ironclad platform enforces. Ph.D. chemical engineer, fifteen years in R&D, which is why I built a system instead of another spreadsheet.
Paste the numbers off an offering memo and get a fast go/no-go before you spend a night in the model.
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