Glossary

Rent Roll Mark-to-Market

Also known as: Mark-to-Market Rent Analysis

A unit-by-unit analysis comparing every occupied unit's current in-place contract rent to its current achievable market rent, used to quantify aggregate loss to lease or gain to lease across the entire rent roll and to project the embedded rent growth, or erosion, that will be captured as leases expire and roll over time.

A mark-to-market study is a core diligence exercise in both acquisition underwriting and periodic asset management reporting, and a rigorous version segments the gap by unit type, lease expiration date, and resident tenure to build a realistic roll-forward schedule rather than assuming the entire aggregate gap converts to income in the first year — the actual pace of conversion depends on the lease expiration calendar and on retention assumptions, not on the size of the gap alone. Buyers frequently commission an independent third-party rent-comp survey specifically to support this analysis, since relying solely on a seller's own asking-rent figures to mark the rent roll risks embedding the seller's optimistic market-rent assumptions directly into the buyer's underwriting. The exercise is equally important, and more often overlooked, in markets showing aggregate gain to lease, where it quantifies downside exposure to renewal and re-leasing risk rather than upside.