A rent roll is the schedule of every tenant in a multi-tenant commercial property: who they are, how much space they occupy, what they pay, when their lease expires, and what options they hold. It's the foundation of every underwriting model because it captures the actual cash flow the property generates, lease by lease, instead of the aggregated NOI a buyer might see in summary financials.
A clean institutional rent roll includes columns for tenant name, suite number, leased square footage, lease commencement and expiration dates, current base rent (per square foot and total), annual escalation terms, recovery provisions, security deposit, options to renew or terminate, and any free rent or tenant improvement allowances still being amortized. The most common variation is whether the rent roll shows base rent only or all-in (base plus expense recoveries) — a meaningful distinction that has tripped up many junior underwriters.
Reading a rent roll is a learned skill. Experienced asset managers immediately look for lease rollover concentration (too many leases expiring in the same year is a major risk), in-place rents materially below or above market (signals upside or downside), tenant credit quality, and the weighted average lease term remaining. A rent roll showing 30% of leases expiring next year tells a very different story from one showing the same NOI under 10-year stable leases.
Rent rolls also reveal the tenant mix and concentration risk. A property with one tenant occupying 60% of the space is fundamentally a single-tenant deal regardless of how many other small tenants are present. A property with 20 tenants where the largest is 8% is a true multi-tenant deal with diversified risk. These structural facts often matter more for valuation than the total NOI itself — and they're invisible without examining the rent roll line by line.
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