Rental arbitrage

Lease the house. Rent the rooms. Keep the spread.

No purchase, no mortgage, no down payment — you sign a lease on a whole house and re-let it by the room. The capital is a deposit and the furniture, so the returns look very different from buying. So do the risks.

The deal killer is the lease, not the maths. Every arbitrage deal lives or dies on one clause: does the landlord allow subletting and per-room rental, in writing? Do not sign a standard residential lease and plan to ask later. And the local occupancy rules on the zoning page apply to you exactly the same as to an owner — leasing does not exempt you from them.

The property

Enter a ZIP and we will fill in the room rents and a whole-house lease estimate.

Your lease

What you re-let

A 3-bed house often lets as 4 rooms once a den or dining room is converted — but check the occupancy cap first, and check that the lease allows the alteration.

What you carry

The spread

Monthly net spread
—
after everything
Cash-on-cash
—
Spread ratio
—
room income ÷ lease
Payback
—
on money in
Break-even occupancy
—
Profit over the term
—
Screener

Where the spread is widest

Every market where we have both room rates and a HUD whole-unit rent. The ratio is four rooms of by-the-room income divided by the 3-bedroom lease cost — gross, before your costs, so treat it as a shortlist tool and then run the real numbers above. National median ratio is 1.614×.

What the lease figure is. HUD's Small Area Fair Market Rent for the ZIP, FY2026 — a public payment standard set near the 40th percentile of standard rents, not a market asking rent. It is the only free national ZIP-level whole-unit rent that exists. In hot markets a real lease will cost more than this; in soft ones you can often sign below it. Negotiate, then put the real number in the calculator.
Market ZIPs Room /wk 3BR lease /mo 4 rooms /mo Ratio Zoning Citations?