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Beginner Academy guide

Run first underwriting

8 min readBeginner

Use one property to practice rent, vacancy, expenses, debt service, cash flow, cap rate, and cash-on-cash without overcomplicating the model.

Included in: Core Investor Curriculum

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Make the first model useful, not perfect

The first underwriting pass should answer one question: does this property deserve more time? Start with rent, vacancy, taxes, insurance, management, maintenance, utilities, debt service, and expected repairs.

Do not hide weak assumptions inside a polished spreadsheet. Mark every number as verified, estimated, or unknown so the next action is obvious.