When a rent roll doesn't match the leases, whose job is it to catch that

Question

Take a package on a four-plex where the listing sheet shows $3,400 a month gross, but the actual leases add up to $3,050, and one of the four units is month-to-month with no written lease at all, just a note that the tenant pays $700. A listing agent presenting the $3,400 figure as market rent rather than actual rent is common practice on the seller side, but sending it to a buyer without flagging the gap between market and actual is a different thing. An investor-focused buyer's agent should be catching that discrepancy before it reaches the client, pulling every lease, reconciling the rent roll line by line, and flagging any unit without a written lease as a real risk item, not a footnote. What's reasonably the agent's job versus the buyer's own diligence comes down to representation: an agent working for the buyer owes that reconciliation as a baseline service, while a buyer working with a seller's agent or no agent at all should assume nobody is checking it for them.

omar_haddad · Answer

Reconciling the rent roll against the actual leases is the buyer agent's job on a multifamily package, full stop. Market rent on a listing sheet is marketing copy. The gap you found is $350 a month, $4,200 a year, which at a 7 cap is $60,000 of value. That's not a rounding error she should be passing through without a note.

jordan_ellis2 · Answer

The undocumented month-to-month would worry me more than the $350. No lease means no security deposit trail, no written notice terms, and whatever the state's holdover rules are apply instead of anything you agreed to. Those rules vary a lot state to state.

brandonlee36 · Answer

Four-plexes commonly have at least one unit like that. What matters from an agent isn't preventing it, it's that the email says "unit 3 is $700 month to month, no written lease, ask for the deposit ledger." @omar_haddad is right that she should have flagged it. Whether that's a fire-her thing or a train-her thing depends on what else she's brought to the table.

When a rent roll doesn't match the leases, whose job is it to catch that

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