How To Determine Duplex Rent

[Caleb Rehg]

I was looking at a duplex on Zillow and saw the Rent Zestimate at $2000, now could you charge this per unit?  Would also love to know any other methods if determining rent in duplexes.  Thanks.

[Brian Wilson]

Quote from @Caleb Rehg:

I was looking at a duplex on Zillow and saw the Rent Zestimate at $2000, now could you charge this per unit?  Would also love to know any other methods if determining rent in duplexes.  Thanks.

 My recommendation is that you avoid Zestimate tools. Instead you can look at current listings of similar kind on zillow and assume that the lowest range is the floor for what you can get. That's how I analyze properties, some might consider it overly conservative or "sand bagging" in the underwriting process, but it ensures that I'm not evaluating the deal with the most likely numbers. That being said, when looking at listed properties see how long they were listed for. If it's been 120 days or more I would say rent is either too high, or the property has something wrong with it. 

I had a subscription to rento-meter for several years. I do not feel that in my markets it was accurate enough. Either way too low (most common) or too high even when comping out the rent data against the new property.