How to share an investment property analysis with a client

Your working file has rejected properties in it, a rent estimate you talked yourself down from twice, and a note about the roof you meant to check and did.

None of that goes in front of an owner deciding whether to wire $61,000. But stripping it into a brochure is the other failure, because what the client is actually buying from you is judgment they can inspect.

What goes in the client version?

Your recommendation. Buy, watch or pass. One word, before anything else.

The asking price and the return that fits their goal. A cash-flow buyer needs cash-on-cash. Someone doing a 1031 into stabilized property needs the cap rate. A Fix & Flip needs profit and margin, and a BRRRR buyer needs the refinance appraisal more than either. Choosing the metric that matches the goal is most of what makes an analysis feel written for one person.

The assumptions, sourced. Vacancy, management, maintenance, capex, insurance, and which tax basis you used. Firms skip this section and it’s the one that decides whether the document survives a skeptical spouse.

The risks, named. Not “market conditions may vary.” The flood zone, the 1962 electrical panel, the fact that your rent comp set is four properties and two of them are duplexes.

And the thing you checked that turned out fine. The roof from your working file. An analysis that only lists problems reads as a defence; one that says “I checked the roof, it’s got eight years in it” reads as an inspection.

Three things to cut

Internal scoring. If you run deals through a rating system, that rating is for your triage queue. Put a number in front of a client and they’ll argue with the number, and you’ll lose that argument on a property you were right about.

Anything you can’t source. An insurance figure you guessed reads exactly like one you got quoted, right up until the real quote lands 40% higher and every other number you gave becomes suspect.

The properties you passed over. An owner who sees the four you rejected will ask about all four, and you’ll spend the call defending old decisions instead of making a new one.

Link or PDF?

Send both when the decision is real. They do different jobs.

A link tells you whether it was opened, expires on a date you choose, and keeps the client looking at the version you actually sent rather than an attachment that’s been forwarded three times. A PDF is what walks into a bank, and lenders and spouses are the two readers least likely to click anything.

One thing to know about either: most shared reports are a snapshot taken when you sent them, not a live view. That’s usually what you want, since it’s a record of what you advised on the day you advised it. Just say which on the page, because a lender will treat a six-week-old rent figure as a live claim whichever format it arrived in.

If you’re sending on your firm’s brand, look at what the client sees before the first one goes out. On CapScout the sections a client sees are set at the organization level, optionally overridden per share, and snapshotted onto the link at the moment you share. Re-sharing the same property to the same client reuses that link and re-applies your current settings, so change them before you re-send rather than after.

Writing assumptions that hold up

Give the number, the source, and the date.

The tax line catches firms out, and not in the way most people expect. In about 15 states, California, Florida, Michigan and Texas among them, a sale resets the assessment or strips a cap the seller spent years building. Most other states reassess on a cycle at market value whether or not the property changed hands. Either way the seller’s current bill is the wrong number to model from, so get the rule from the county assessor before you underwrite the tax line.

What happens after you send it?

Know whether it was opened.

An owner who opened your analysis five times across three days is deciding, and usually needs one specific question answered. An owner who never opened it isn’t in the market this month, whatever they said on the call. Those two look identical in your inbox.

If you’re sending the same client several deals over a few weeks, give them one place that holds all of them instead of a fresh link each time. They stop hunting through email for the property you discussed on Tuesday, and you stop re-sending links from March.

The client who’s going to say yes decides on the first screen. The client who’s going to say no still needs to see that you did the work, because the next one you send is the one they buy. And the lender, who reads none of it until the file is in underwriting, needs the assumptions to still be there in six weeks.

General information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Assessment practice, disclosure requirements and what you may charge for vary by state; confirm yours with your state real estate commission and your own attorney.