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September 15, 2023

DSCR Loan Calculator: How to Find Your Ratio

Categories: Blog Posts

A DSCR loan calculator is an invaluable tool for real estate investors.

In the investment world, rental properties are a great source of wealth. The financial potential in fixing up places to then rent out is a very lucrative model, especially in the current housing economy.

What is a DSCR Loan?

DSCR loans are specifically designed for real estate investors who hold rental properties.

The acronym literally stands for Debt-Service Coverage Ratio which is a fancy way of saying that the loan cares about the cash flow of a property.

The great news, especially for new investors, is that accessing these loans is less dependent on personal or business income. Even if you’ve just begun a new business, qualification for DSCR depends almost entirely on the potential value and expenses of the rental property itself.

What is a DSCR Ratio?

The DSCR ratio is a simple calculation that compares income to expenses—the cash flowing in vs. the cash flowing out—on a single property.

Essentially, a DSCR ratio of 1 simply means that the income and expenses equal each other.

The DSCR ratio measures the break-even point of your investment. So long as you bring in the same amount of money as you invest, you won’t lose anything.

However, a DSCR ratio of higher-than-1 is even better. A higher ratio means that you’re bringing in more money than you’re spending—generating cash flow and building wealth.

Raising the Ratio

You can get a higher DSCR ratio in a few ways.

1. Be mindful of your expenses.

Especially if you’re a new investor, make sure you’re shopping around for the best deals.

Before you buy a property, research the typical costs for the area. Is there an HOA? Will you need any specialized insurance? Typical taxes?

Knowing these things beforehand can help you make more informed decisions and keep your costs lower.

2. Set rents intentionally.

Look at the average rents in your area. Remember, the higher your income (rents), the higher your DSCR ratio.

Let’s look at an example:

When rents equal our cash out, lenders may see your loan as “safe,” but it’s not making you any money.

Instead, raising rents can help you end up with a higher DSCR ratio (and more money in your pocket).

When you raise rents, simply divide your expenses by your income (rents) to find your new ratio.

By raising rents by $200, we end up with a much better ratio (1.2) that actually creates wealth instead of simply covering expenses.

Use Our DSCR Loan Calculator

To help you find your projected rents, expenses, and ratio, you can use our DSCR loan calculator. It’s a free, user-friendly download that will help you estimate your DSCR ratio to see if your investment property is going to break even.

Once you have an estimate for your ratio, it’s time to start looking for loans.

Finding a DSCR Loan

Banks typically like to see ratios of 1 or higher.

However, if you’re working with a property that might not break even, you can often still find a loan, but you might be stuck with higher rates.

You can also check out our website and inquire about the DSCR options we offer.

Here at The Cash Flow Company, we scour the market to make sure we offer competitive rates and connect good people with good loans.

If you have questions or want to talk about a loan, reach out to us at Mike@TheCashFlowCompany.com.

by Rachel Marcelia

August 30, 2023

DSCR Loan Calculator: Understanding Monthly Payments

Categories: Blog Posts

Looking at a DSCR loan calculator and wondering what numbers you need to plug in to make everything come out even?

If you’re new to the DSCR game, you’ve likely heard people talking about the DSCR ratio and how that number helps you set rents. But how do you actually calculate all of that?

There are quite a few numbers that go into calculating a DSCR ratio (which is then often used to calculate rents).

What is a DSCR Ratio?

A DSCR ratio is simply the break even point.

Essentially, you start by adding up all of your monthly expenses (mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, HOA fees, etc.). If you compare that number to the amount you’re charging for rents and those numbers are the same (you’re putting out and bringing in the same $$ amount), then you have a DSCR ratio of 1.

You never want a DSCR below 1 (spending more than you’re bringing in). However, a ratio of 1 simply means that you’re breaking even. In other words, you’re not actually making money unless you can raise the ratio (and raise rents) in order to bring in more money than you’re spending.

Lenders like to see positive cash flow, so it’s typically good to aim for a DSCR ratio of 1.25. That means you’ll make 25% more than you’re spending.

How To Calculate Monthly Loan Payments

One of the most significant outflows of cash is the loan payment. In addition to fixed costs (think taxes, insurance, etc.), these payments are a significant factor of a DSCR plan. Once we know how much money is going out every month, we can figure out how much we need coming in.

The property in our example cost $250K and the investor paid a 20% down payment.

Purchase Price = $250,000
Down Payment = 20%
30-Year Fixed-Rate (8.5%) DSCR Loan = $200,000

The easiest way to calculate your monthly payments is to use a calculator designed for these numbers. We recommend using a site like calculator.net and selecting their amortization calculator.

You can plug in the numbers, and it will do the work for you.

Once you plug in the numbers and hit calculate, you’ll see that your monthly loan payments are just under $1,538.

Updated Monthly Costs:

Fixed Costs Approximate Estimate = $450
Approximate Loan Payments = $1,538
Total = $1,988

Now that you know all of the money you’re paying each month, you know that to hit a DSCR ratio of 1, you’ll need to have rents of at least $1,988 in order to break even.

When working with your DSCR loan calculator, the monthly payments are a critical component to set you up for success.

Read the full article here.

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video here:

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by Rachel Marcelia

August 22, 2023

How to Calculate DSCR Loan Amount

Categories: Blog Posts

How can you use the DSCR ratio to calculate DSCR loan amounts?

When getting into the DSCR game, it’s important to run some numbers on the front end to evaluate potential deals.

How do you know if your property is going to meet DSCR requirements? What’s the minimum loan you’ll need, and what’s the maximum you can shop for the purchase price?

Easy. Start with the DSCR ratio, and then walk through these steps to figure out your payments.

Calculating DSCR Loans

1. Figure Out Local Rents

Using resources like Zillow or rent.com, you can look around to find standard rents for your area. This is the first step in getting future estimates (such as loan total, purchase price, etc.).

Don’t start spending money before calculating whether or not you’ll actually be able to pay those costs back.

Let’s say standard rent in the area is around $2,500. This means that, in order to break even, we need to keep all of our monthly expenses below that $2,500.

Rents = $2,500
Expenses ≦ $2,500

2. Monthly Expenses

For this example property, there are three monthly expenses. Taxes, insurance, and HOA fees. Other properties might have additional insurance or fees, so make sure you look at the neighborhood.

Here’s what we’re looking at for this example:

Taxes: $1,200/year ($100/mo)
Insurance: $2,400/year ($200/mo)
HOA: $200/month
Total Monthly Expenses: $500

Obviously at this point in the process, these numbers are only estimates. However, if you do research to have informed estimates, you can save a lot of money and headache down the road.

3. The Leftover = Maximum Mortgage Payments

If our estimated rent is $2,500/month and we subtract our $500 of monthly expenses out of that number, we’re left with $2,000/month.

$2,500 (income: rent) – $500 (expenses) = $2,000 (leftover)

Now we’re ready to talk about the mortgage.

The leftover $2,000 is the maximum you could pay each month towards a mortgage.

If we want to qualify for a DSCR and keep our ratio at 1, this gives us our upper limit.

Translating Expected Expenses Into Your DSCR Loan

So, how do we take this $2,000/month number and translate it into DSCR loan requirements?

How much could you afford in a loan?

The easiest way is to use our updated DSCR calculator. It’s free to download and easy to use!

By inputting the current estimates, you can use this download to calculate DSCR loan requirements. What do you qualify for? What terms can you expect?

Our current estimate would likely qualify for an 8% interest rate on a 30 year mortgage.

With those numbers, we can now really start planning.

The Maximum Loan Amount

As we mentioned above, we recently updated our DSCR calculator to include a worksheet that helps you figure out your maximum loan. Even if you’ve downloaded the calculator before, you can redownload to get the updated version.

You can also use sites like calculator.net, input the numbers, and see what you’re working with.

Once we use our DSCR calculator, we discover that the maximum loan we can get and still keep our DSCR ratio at 1 is around $272,500.

Read the full article here.

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full video here:

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by Rachel Marcelia

August 18, 2023

DSCR Loan Requirements: Calculating Maximum Purchase Price

Categories: Blog Posts

How can you use estimated rent to get a clear understanding of DSCR loan requirements?

When getting into the DSCR game, it’s important to run some numbers on the front end to evaluate potential deals.

How do you know if your property is going to meet DSCR requirements? What’s the minimum loan you’ll need, and what’s the maximum you can shop for the purchase price?

Today we’re going to look at these calculations, walking through how you can get pretty good estimates for these numbers using the DSCR ratio and the average rent rate in your local area.

What is a DSCR Ratio?

The DSCR ratio is simply the break-even point for that property. Essentially, if the DSCR ratio equals 1, then the total cost of the project is canceled out by the incoming rent.

These costs are decently easy to estimate by talking to other investors in your area. You can often find HOA or tax information online which will help you figure these numbers.

Understanding the DSCR ratio is the foundation for successful investing.

By building your investment strategy off of this ratio, you know that, at the very least, you’ll break even by sticking to a DSCR ratio = 1.

Once you’re sure you can break even, you can even set your rents slightly higher (or try to keep costs lower) to have a higher ratio of 1.25 (where you’ll have 25% higher income than outgoing cash). This typically comes in a later step which you can read about in a previous article.

Calculating Maximum Loan Amount Using the DSCR Ratio

1. Figure Out Local Rents

Using resources like Zillow or rent.com, you can look around to find standard rents for your area. This is the first step in getting future estimates (such as loan total, purchase price, etc.).

Don’t start spending money before calculating whether or not you’ll actually be able to pay those costs back.

Let’s say standard rent in the area is around $2,500. This means that, in order to break even, we need to keep all of our monthly expenses below that $2,500.

Rents = $2,500
Expenses ≦ $2,500

2. Monthly Expenses

For this example property, there are three monthly expenses. Taxes, insurance, and HOA fees. Other properties might have additional insurance or fees, so make sure you look at the neighborhood.

Here’s what we’re looking at for this example:

Taxes: $1,200/year ($100/mo)
Insurance: $2,400/year ($200/mo)
HOA: $200/month
Total Monthly Expenses: $500

Obviously at this point in the process, these numbers are only estimates. However, if you do research to have informed estimates, you can save a lot of money and headache down the road.

3. The Leftover = Maximum Mortgage Payments

If our estimated rent is $2,500/month and we subtract our $500 of monthly expenses out of that number, we’re left with $2,000/month.

$2,500 (income: rent) – $500 (expenses) = $2,000 (leftover)

Now we’re ready to talk about the mortgage.

The leftover $2,000 is the maximum you could pay each month towards a mortgage.

If we want to qualify for a DSCR and keep our ratio at 1, this gives us our upper limit.

Translating Expected Expenses Into Your DSCR Loan

So, how do we take this $2,000/month number and translate it into DSCR loan requirements?

How much could you afford in a loan?

The easiest way is to use our updated DSCR calculator. It’s free to download and easy to use!

By inputting the current estimates, you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what sort of DSCR loans you’ll qualify for.

Our current estimate would likely qualify for an 8% interest rate on a 30 year mortgage.

With those numbers, we can now really start planning.

The Maximum Loan Amount

You can also use sites like calculator.net, input the numbers, and see what you’re working with.

Once we use our DSCR calculator, we discover that the maximum loan we can get and still keep our DSCR ratio at 1 is around $272,500.

Putting It All Together: Purchase Price

If our maximum loan is $272,500, this helps us know what to look for in a property. The goal of real estate investing is to leverage other people’s money to ultimately turn a profit for yourself.

So if we use that loan amount and we estimate a potential down payment of 20% or 25%, what sort of purchase price can we look at?

Our DSCR calculator has a worksheet that will also walk you through these calculations, but you can see in the graph above that we can look for properties in the $350,00 bracket.

Once again, looking at DSCR loan requirements, we know we need to have a plan to break even to qualify.

Work Backwards Before You Work Forwards

You’d be surprised how many people call us because they bit off a deal they couldn’t chew. It takes time to research the rents and expenses, but it’s worth it to protect your investments.

By working backwards from the estimated rents and fees, we were able to determine both our loan and the maximum purchase price.

This method is ultimately built on the foundation of maintaining a DSCR ratio of 1 or better to ensure that we’re never losing money in our investments.

If you need help with this or if you want us to run through some numbers, we’re happy to help. Just email us at Info@TheCashFlowCompany.com.

You can also visit our YouTube channel for more tips and tricks for creating wealth through real estate investing.

by Rachel Marcelia

August 15, 2023

DSCR Calculator: How to Determine Your Rental Income

Categories: Blog Posts

What do you need to know in order to effectively use a DSCR calculator?

If you’re new to the DSCR game, you’ve likely heard people talking about the DSCR ratio and how that number helps you set rents. But how do you actually calculate all of that?

What is a DSCR Ratio?

A DSCR ratio is simply the break-even point.

Lenders like to see positive cash flow, so it’s typically good to aim for a DSCR ratio of 1.25. That means you’ll make 25% more than you’re spending.

How to Calculate Your Fixed Costs

The first step of figuring out the ratio is to get a really clear picture of your expenses. Expenses come in two parts: fixed costs and monthly payments for loans.

Let’s look at fixed costs first.

These fixed monthly expenses consist of things like HOA fees, insurance, taxes, and other exciting things.

For Example…

Let’s take a peek at some numbers based on a property we reviewed recently:

Taxes. This property had $1,200/year in taxes. Divide that by 12 and you have $100/month.
Property Insurance. We’re going to look at $1,800/year or $150/month.
Flood Insurance. This property didn’t have any HOA fees, but it did need flood insurance. That comes to $2,4000/year or $200/month.

In total, you have $450/month in expenses for this property before factoring in your mortgage payment.

How To Calculate Monthly Loan Payments

Once you know your fixed costs, there are a few other numbers to take into consideration before setting your rents. Once we know how much money is going out every month, we can figure out how much we need coming in.

The property in our example cost $250K and the investor paid a 20% down payment.

Purchase Price = $250,000
Down Payment = 20%
30-Year Fixed-Rate (8.5%) DSCR Loan = $200,000

The easiest way to calculate your monthly payments is to use a calculator designed for these numbers. We recommend using a site like calculator.net and selecting their amortization calculator.

You can plug in the numbers, and it will do the work for you.

Once you plug in the numbers and hit calculate, you’ll see that your monthly loan payments are just under $1,538.

Updated Monthly Costs:

Fixed Costs = $450
Approximate Loan Payments = $1,538
Total = $1,988

Now that you know all of the money you’re paying each month, you know that to hit a DSCR ratio of 1, you’ll need to have rents of at least $1,988 in order to break even.

Using the DSCR Ratio to Set Rents

As we mentioned before, a DSCR ratio of 1 is fine – you won’t be losing money. But it’s not an optimal investment strategy.

Lenders like to see you turning a profit, and you should too!

Returning to our above example, let’s say your outgoing expenses are $1,988. If you raise your rents by 25% (raising that DSCR ratio to 1.25 instead of 1), you’ll suddenly be making a 25% profit.

Here’s how you get those numbers:

Breaking even on your real estate investing projects is great, but making money is the goal. Understanding how to calculate these numbers is a critical step towards successful investing

Check Out Our DSCR Calculator

To help you get an even clearer understanding of DSCRs, check out our DSCR calculator. It’s free to download and easy to use.

You’re also welcome to email us at Info@TheCashFlowCompany.com. We’re more than happy to answer questions and help you find the right deal.

We’re always looking for ways to help you succeed in your investment journey by giving you the knowledge and tools to win.

by Rachel Marcelia

March 8, 2023

The Benefits of a DSCR Loan for Investors Who Own a Rental

Categories: Blog Posts

How do you benefit from a DSCR loan? Why should you get one?

A DSCR loan can replace a conventional loan for real estate investors.

But what’s it all about? Let’s go over the benefits of a DSCR loan.

Benefits of a DSCR Loan vs Conventional

These loans are relatively simple:

There are no personal income requirements (no W-2s, tax returns, etc). Instead, it’s all based on the income and expenses of the property.
There are no business or experience requirements. Bank or conventional loans require a business to exist for 2 years or more before they’ll lend to you.
They don’t need to see your portfolio. For other loans, lenders may ask to see what other properties you’ve flipped or rented. DSCR loans only care about the rental property at hand.

DSCR loans come in all shapes and sizes (3-year, 5-year, 30-year, 40-year), with a broad variety of details depending on lenders.

What Is the “DSCR” Part?

A debt service coverage ratio loan focuses on the debt ratio of the property. Does the rent pay for the expenses?

Rent – The monthly income a property receives from tenants, based on comps.
Expenses – Despite all the expenses of a property, a DSCR loan only takes into account the mortgage payment, interest, taxes, insurance, and HOA fees.

One way to think of this ratio is: do you at least break even on this property?

To calculate a DSCR loan: Does Rent ÷ Income equal 1?

If yes, then you exactly break even. If it’s more than 1, then you have cash flow (and getting a DSCR loan will be even easier). But if this number is less than 1, the property costs more than it makes, and you’ll need a special kind of DSCR loan, likely with worse terms.

Benefits of a DSCR Loan

Let’s go over all the positives of a DSCR loan:

No income requirements for you – just the property.
It doesn’t matter how old your business is.
You can write everything off on your tax returns.
Lenders don’t consider your other properties in the underwriting.
You can buy in an LLC or company name.
They have interest-only DSCR options.
There is a variety of term lengths – from 3-year adjustable to 40-year fixed.
They can be used for short-term rentals, like Airbnb or VRBO.
A DSCR loan is a perfect long-term refinance loan for a flip project. It works great with BRRRR.

Read the full article here.

Watch the video here:

Watch this video on YouTube

by Mike B

January 18, 2023

Quick ‘n Easy DSCR Calculation

Categories: Blog Posts

Your DSCR calculation made easy with our free loan calculator.

Don’t be intimidated by a DSCR loan. If the property cash flows, then you have a pretty good shot at getting approved.

And there’s a simple way to find out the cash flow of a rental property: the debt service coverage ratio.

Underwriters use this ratio to determine if a property is positively cash flowing. It’s an important metric to understand if you want to maximize your leverage and get the most out of your investments.

Now, let’s go over how to calculate DSCR quickly and understand what it means for your property.

What Is a DSCR in Real Estate?

Firstly, let’s define what DSCR is. It’s a ratio that compares a property’s income to its expenses.

You calculate DSCR by dividing the property’s income (rents) by its expenses (monthly mortgage payment, taxes, insurance, and HOA if applicable). A ratio of greater than 1 means the property is cash flowing, which is what both you and your lender want to see.

So, the higher the ratio, the better the cash flow, and the more money in your pocket.

For a DSCR loan, the higher this ratio is, the better the terms your loan will have.

Expenses & Income for DSCR Calculation

Next, to find out the expenses your DSCR loan will consider, you’ll add together four items:

Mortgage
Property Tax
Insurance
HOA Fees

Finally, to find out the income, you’ll need to check out what rents are in the area for comparable properties.

How to Calculate DSCR Quickly

To help keep all these numbers straight when you calculate DSCR, you can download our free, simple DSCR calculator at this link.

Read the full article here.

Watch the video here:

Watch this video on YouTube

by Mike B

November 24, 2022

How to Calculate Different DSCR Loan Options

Categories: Blog Posts

There are many DSCR loan options – but how do you calculate the ratio for each one?

Some of your DSCR loan options include 30-year fixed mortgages, 40-year fixed, or interest-only. But how do you know which one’s best?

You’ll have to crunch the numbers. Here’s one example of calculating different DSCR loan options on a $200,000 loan with $2,000 rent.

What Is a DSCR?

DSCR means debt service coverage ratio. It’s a loan for rental properties that hinges on cash flow.

A DSCR loan will be a useful product in your real estate investing career. It requires no income verification and no work or investment history. These loans only require that the property’s income is the same (or higher than) the expenses.

Cash flow is always important to you as an investor, and for DSCR loans, it matters just as much to your lender. The better your cash flow, the better LTV and rates you can get.

It all depends on a little number – the ratio itself. Here’s how to calculate the DSCR with different loan options.

How to Calculate the DSCR

Loan LTVs and rates on a DSCR are determined by the debt service coverage ratio itself. Now that we have all our raw information, we can plug it into our DSCR calculation to get the ratio.

Here’s how you get the numbers you need:

Add up your expenses (taxes, insurance, and HOA fees) with each loan’s payment amount. Then divide rent by all those expenses.

Costs + Mortgage = Total Expenses

Rent ÷ Total Expenses = DSCR Ratio

Here’s an example of what it would look like with an example using a $200,000 loan and an 8% interest rate:

We want the DSCR to at least equal 1.

Over 1 is ideal. This is a higher cash flow, and you’ll get a better loan.

Less than 1 means negative cash flow, and means you might have to look at a negative DSCR or a no-ratio loan instead.

<1 = Negative Cash Flow

At 1 = Rent = Expenses

>1 = Positive cash flow

Read the full article here.

Watch the video here.

Watch this video on YouTube

by Mike B

November 19, 2022

Sample of a DSCR Loan Calculation: The Costs

Categories: Blog Posts

An important part of a DSCR loan is knowing your costs. Here’s an example DSCR loan calculation to help you out.

A DSCR loan will be a useful product in your real estate investing career. It requires no income verification and no work or investment history. These loans only require that the property’s income is the same (or higher than) the expenses.

Cash flow really is kind for DSCR loans. Here’s a breakdown of how to calculate the expenses to see if you qualify.

Calculate a DSCR Loan Expenses

You can follow along with your DSCR loan calculator (free download here). We’ll fill out this form to show each step of a DSCR loan calculation.

Rent Income & Loan Amount

Firstly, you need to estimate your loan amount and your rent income. If you have a deal in front of you, you probably have a good idea of the loan amount you’ll need to be able to afford the property.

As for rent, you can get realistic amounts from online sources. Look at Zillow or Rent.com to find the market rate for rent in the property’s neighborhood.

Let’s keep it simple for our example and say our loan is $200,000, and our rent income is $2,000.

What Expenses Count in a DSCR Loan?

We know our income (rent), but now we need to figure out our costs.

The expenses considered in a DSCR loan DO include:

✔ Taxes

✔ Insurance

✔ HOA fees

Expenses NOT considered in a DSCR loan are things like:

✘ Property management fees

✘ Utilities

✘ Maintenance

To estimate the taxes on the property, you could use a property tax calculator like this one. If you need an estimate on insurance, you can try this home insurance calculator. You can figure out HOA fees by contacting the HOA, if that applies to your property.

If any of these costs are charged annually, then you’ll need to divide by 12 to break it down into a monthly cost.

Let’s take a look at what information we have now for our example DSCR loan:

Calculating Loan Cost

Secondly, DSCR lenders will offer many types of the loans – fixed-rate mortgages, interest-only, ARMs, etc. You need to find what best fits you, and to do that, you’ll have to run all the numbers.

To calculate each of the amortized loans, you can use an amortization calculator like this one. Add in your information – loan amount, interest rate, and loan length.

We’re going to use an 8% interest rate for our example, since that’s the anticipated average for next year.

In reality, each loan and lender will have a different interest rate. Additionally, the interest rate may fluctuate depending on your qualifications and DSCR. You can get this information from your lenders to plug into your calculator.

We’ll use three common loans for this example: a 30-year fixed, 40-year fixed, and interest only loan.

If we had a 30-year mortgage for $200,000 at 8%, our monthly payment would be $1,467.

For a 40-year fixed with the same info, payments would be $1,390.

For interest-only, you can calculate the loan fairly simply yourself. Multiply the loan amount by the interest rate (e.g., 200,000 × .08 = 16,000). That gives you the yearly interest, then you divide it by 12 to get the monthly payment. For our example, that’s $1,333.

So what do you do with these numbers? How do you know which loan is best?

It depends on your priorities. To have the most cash flow, the lowest number is best (in this case, interest-only). If you need something that amortizes, a 30-year would probably be best.

But you don’t really know which loan will be best for you until you calculate the DSCR.

Read the full article here.

Watch the video here.

Watch this video on YouTube

by Mike B

November 15, 2022

How to Calculate a DSCR Loan – Step By Step

Categories: Blog Posts

From figuring out expenses to doing the math… Here’s how to calculate a DSCR loan.

The more you know about DSCRs, the more power you have when you go to buy or refinance.

When you practice the numbers yourself, the less you have to rely on a lender to tell you if a deal is good or not.

Download your own DSCR calculator here. Follow along with your own numbers as we go through an example of how to calculate a DSCR loan.

What Is a DSCR?

DSCR means debt service coverage ratio. It’s a loan for rental properties that hinges on cash flow.

Cash flow is always important to you as an investor, and for DSCR loans, it matters just as much to your lender. The better your cash flow, the better LTV and rates you can get.

But even if your property has negative cash flow, you still can get DSCR loans. You’ll just have to pay for it when it comes to the LTV and interest rate.

Calculate a DSCR Loan Expenses

You can follow along with your DSCR loan calculator (free download here). We’ll fill out these form to show each step of how to calculate a DSCR loan.

Rent Income & Loan Amount

As for rent, you can get realistic amounts from online sources. Look at Zillow or Rent.com to find the market rate for rent in the property’s neighborhood.

Let’s keep it simple for our example and say our loan is $200,000, and our rent income is $2,000.

What Expenses Count in a DSCR Loan?

We know our income (rent), but now we need to figure out our costs.

The expenses considered in a DSCR loan DO include:

✔ Taxes

✔ Insurance

✔ HOA fees

Expenses NOT considered in a DSCR loan are things like:

✘ Property management fees

✘ Utilities

✘ Maintenance

If any of these costs are charged annually, then you’ll need to divide by 12 to break it down into a monthly cost.

Let’s take a look at what information we have now for our example DSCR loan:

Calculating Loan Cost

To calculate each of the amortized loans, you can use an amortization calculator like this one. Add in your information – loan amount, interest rate, and loan length.

We’re going to use an 8% interest rate for our example, since that’s the anticipated average for next year.

We’ll use three common loans for this example: a 30-year fixed, 40-year fixed, and interest only loan.

If we had a 30-year mortgage for $200,000 at 8%, our monthly payment would be $1,467.

For a 40-year fixed with the same info, payments would be $1,390.

So what do you do with these numbers? How do you know which loan is best?

It depends on your priorities. To have the most cash flow, the lowest number is best (in this case, interest-only). If you need something that amortizes, a 30-year would probably be best.

But you don’t really know which loan will be best for you until you calculate the DSCR.

How to Calculate the DSCR

Loan LTVs and rates on a DSCR are determined by the debt service coverage ratio itself. Now that we have all our raw information, we can plug it into our DSCR calculation to get the ratio.

Here’s how you get the numbers you need:

Add up your expenses (taxes, insurance, and HOA fees) with each loan’s payment amount. Then divide rent by all those expenses.

Costs + Mortgage = Total Expenses

Rent ÷ Total Expenses = DSCR Ratio

Here’s an example of what it would look like with an example using a $200,000 loan and an 8% interest rate:

We want the DSCR to at least equal 1.

Over 1 is ideal. This is a higher cash flow, and you’ll get a better loan.

Less than 1 means negative cash flow, and means you might have to look at a negative DSCR or a no-ratio loan instead.

<1 = Negative Cash Flow

At 1 = Rent = Expenses

>1 = Positive cash flow

Help with How to Calculate a DSCR Loan

Do you have a deal with a DSCR of 1 or more? Do you need help finding out?

If you have any questions, we’d be glad to help. If you have a deal, we can run the numbers for you. Email us at Info@TheCashFlowCompany.com.

You have choices in the DSCR world. Let us help you find them!

by Mike B