Glossary · DealProp
Vacancy rate
The percentage of rentable units that are not generating rent in a given period. The single number that tells you whether your portfolio is leaking money.
Vacancy rate is the percentage of rentable units in a portfolio that are not generating rent during a given period — usually a year. A 10-unit portfolio where one unit sits empty for two months has a vacancy rate of about 1.7% on the year (one unit, two months, divided by ten units times twelve months).
The honest computation includes every kind of non-rent — vacancies between tenants, units offline for renovation, units occupied by a non-paying holdover tenant. If money is not coming in from a unit that could be earning, it counts.
Why it matters
Vacancy is the most expensive line item most landlords never see. An empty unit does not just stop earning; it costs money — utilities, insurance, taxes, mortgage interest, ongoing maintenance — while contributing zero. A 30-day vacancy on a $1,800/month unit is about $1,800 in lost rent plus another $200-400 in carrying costs. A 90-day vacancy can easily eat a year of that unit's net profit.
Vacancy also signals. A vacancy rate trending up across your portfolio over a couple of years is the market telling you something. A unit that sits vacant when comparable units in the neighborhood rent quickly is your unit telling you something. Track it and you have a leading indicator. Ignore it and you find out at year-end.
In DealProp
DealProp tracks vacancy at the unit level and rolls it up to the portfolio. Every day a unit is unoccupied counts toward the year's vacancy rate. The dashboard shows it as a percentage and as a dollar figure (estimated rent lost), so the cost is visible. Compare your rate against your own portfolio's trailing-twelve-month baseline, not against an industry average that may not match your market.