I counted the rent and forgot the vacancy between rehab and tenant

Small three bed in a working class pocket, bought at 132k, put 38k in, planned rent 1,650. The refinance math worked on paper and I got most of the cash back, so on the spreadsheet this was a fine deal.

What I missed was the gap. I finished the rehab in early November and did not have a signed lease until the second week of January. Nine weeks of nothing coming in, with the bridge loan still charging me every month, plus utilities I had to keep on for showings and a heating bill on an empty house through a cold December. That was about 5,900 of real money that never appeared anywhere in my model, because my model went straight from "rehab done" to "rent starts."

The part that stings is that it was predictable. Nobody moves between Thanksgiving and New Year unless they have to. My contractor told me the timeline would slip two weeks and I nodded and did not move the lease-up assumption.

The deal still stands and the rent is fine now. But my first year cash flow was wiped out by a gap I could have priced at zero cost by just writing it down.

What I'd do differently: put a lease-up line in the model, sixty days by default, and back-schedule the rehab finish so the property hits the market in spring or late summer rather than December. If the timeline says I'll finish in November, I'd rather slow down and finish in March than eat the holidays.