This guide explains how Mogul Deal Evaluator turns your inputs into cash flow in the detailed model shared by Multifamily, Self Storage and Mobile Home Park deals — the order money flows, and the conventions to know before you compare the numbers to anything else. (Single Family strategies use their own simpler models — see the Buy & Hold, Fix & Flip, and Wholesale guides.)
Step 1 — From potential rent to operating income
The starting point is gross potential rent — what the property would collect fully occupied at your rents. From it come the income losses, then other income (fees, laundry, parking) and any commercial rent are added. The result is gross operating income: what the property actually collects.
Delinquency and concessions work the same way on every asset: each is a percentage of gross potential rent, not of collected rent. Vacancy is where the assets differ, because they do not all describe occupancy the same way:
- Multifamily — your vacancy rate is a percentage of gross potential rent, exactly as above. It is the assumption that carries physical vacancy.
- Self-storage — the projection vacancy rate is likewise applied to potential rent. One wrinkle at Year 0: when the unit mix came from an imported rent roll, in-place income is derived from the occupied units themselves, so vacancy is not deducted a second time on top of it. Projection vacancy stays independent of that.
- Mobile home parks — physical vacancy is already in the inventory. Potential rent charges every developed pad, in-place rent counts only the occupied ones, and the gap between them is the park's physical vacancy. The vacancy rate you enter is therefore an additional collection loss on the scheduled occupied rent — not a second physical-vacancy assumption. In-place occupancy on a park is derived and read-only for the same reason.
The practical consequence for a park: entering 5% on a park that is 90% physically occupied does not model 95% occupancy. It models a 5% collection loss on top of the empty pads already recorded in the inventory.
Step 2 — NOI
NOI = gross operating income − operating expenses, where operating expenses are the line items you entered (taxes, insurance, utilities, payroll, repairs…).
A modeling convention to know: in this model, the asset-management fee is not an operating expense and is not inside NOI — it's treated as sponsor compensation and deducted below NOI. This is Mogul Deal Evaluator's deliberate convention for this model, not a universal accounting rule: an NOI from a listing or another tool that expenses the fee will look lower. Compare like with like.
Step 3 — Below NOI, in order
- The management fee (see above), charged on the same income base in every year so in-place and projected treatments agree.
- Replacement reserves — by default treated below NOI: they reduce cash flow, not NOI. (A setting can move them above NOI instead, which then also changes NOI-based ratios like DSCR — know which treatment your lender expects.)
- Debt service — the year's loan payments. Amortizing loans use standard principal-and-interest schedules; interest-only periods are supported (payments are interest-only and the balance holds until amortization starts). A refinance, if modeled, brings its own debt from the refi year and its proceeds land in that year's cash flow.
What remains is the year's cash flow — the amount available for distributions, and the series your return metrics are computed from.
Why Year 1 can differ from today
In-place (Year 0) income is driven by the property's current occupancy; Year 1 onward uses your stabilized vacancy assumption. If those differ — a 98%-occupied building underwritten to 5% stabilized vacancy — income intentionally steps between Year 0 and Year 1. That's your underwriting assumption showing up, not a bug.
Which assets that describes:
- Multifamily — yes, and it is the only asset with the two extra options that change the transition: a setting to sync projection vacancy from in-place occupancy instead of holding them separate, and a lease-up ramp.
- Self-storage — the Year 0 to Year 1 step happens the same way, but neither the occupancy-sync option nor the lease-up ramp is available.
- Mobile home parks — no. Occupancy is not an assumption that can step, because it comes from the pad inventory. A park's Year 0 to Year 1 change reflects the leasing and infill plan's deliveries instead, and neither occupancy-sync nor the lease-up ramp runs.
From Year 2 onward, expenses grow by your expense-inflation rate on every asset (Year 1 holds the in-place base), and rent growth likewise starts in Year 2.
Mobile home parks: the rest of the model
Beyond the income line — where a park's occupancy is inventory rather than a percentage, as Step 1 describes — parks run through this engine unchanged: the below-NOI order, debt, exit and returns are identical to multifamily. Two park-specific items join the expense side:
- Infill operating costs ramp in with your deliveries and then follow expense inflation, on top of your ordinary expense rows.
- Park capital budgets are equity funded at closing and count once in total and non-financed capital — they are not an operating expense and never touch NOI.
See Pad & Home Income and Infill, Infrastructure & Park Capital.
The exit, briefly
The sale value is exit-year NOI ÷ your exit cap rate. In the Multifamily and Mobile Home Park models you can choose the Exit NOI Basis: Trailing NOI (the default — the final modeled year) or Forward NOI (one additional projected year, used for the exit valuation only — it never changes operating cash flow). On a park, that forward year also picks up any pad deliveries and infill operating costs falling in it. Self Storage values the sale on trailing NOI. Net sale proceeds — after selling costs and loan payoff — join the final year's cash flow for your returns.
When a number is blank
- DSCR unavailable — there's no debt service to divide by; complete the loan inputs.
- Cash-on-cash 0 with no cash invested — the denominator (your total cash in) isn't established yet.
- IRR shows a dash — the cash-flow pattern has no valid rate; see the returns guide for what that means.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Comparing NOI across tools without checking the fee treatment. The below-NOI management fee is the #1 source of "your NOI is different" questions.
- Double-counting reserves. If you enter replacement reserves, don't also bury them in an expense line.
- Expecting Year 0 to match Year 1. The occupancy-to-stabilized step is the model working as designed.
