Tool & guide

DST Due Diligence: Lease and Rent-Roll Reconciliation Tool

By Sequoia ResearchPublished Read as Markdown

DST Due Diligence: Lease and Rent-Roll Reconciliation Tool

Users enter tenant identifiers, rent terms, expiration dates, and relevant lease provisions from both sources. The tool flags mismatches for review without assuming which source is correct.

For an export, select Download in the tool, then Save file when it appears below. Your entries stay in your browser.

What Is This Article About?

This tool compares selected lease terms with the entries you copy from a rent roll. It flags different names, dates, rent amounts, and provision notes without deciding which record is correct. You can also record a missing lease and keep its rent comparison open. The guide explains the inputs, the limited dollar calculations, and the follow-up work needed before using the results in a Delaware statutory trust, or DST, review.

Table of Contents

What the Lease and Rent-Roll Tool Compares

A rent roll is a schedule of rental positions. A lease package can include the original contract and later changes. Their entries may differ because of a mistake, a change in terms, a different reporting date, or a different meaning of rent. Finding the difference is the start of a review, not its conclusion.

This tool stores up to twenty manually entered pairs for one property. Each pair places lease information beside rent-roll information. Seven fields receive a comparison: tenant, unit or lease position, rent month, monthly base rent, start date, expiration date, and provision notes. The tool also retains each source reference, source date, and your follow-up notes.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, tells bank examiners to review current rent rolls and leases when assessing income-producing property. It also calls attention to tenant mix and expiring leases. That is bank-supervision guidance, not a rule that approves this tool or establishes an investor's complete review. OCC Commercial Real Estate Lending, printed page 80

Here the practical task is narrower: make selected differences visible and preserve their sources. The tool cannot read a contract, discover a missing amendment, or decide what a tenant owes. All records come from your entries.

Set the DST Property and Review Period

Start with a useful title, such as a property name and the purpose of the review. Enter one property and offering identity. Similar street names or trust names are not enough if the records concern different assets.

Choose the review cutoff in UTC, the time standard shown by the tool. It cannot be after today's UTC date. Source dates cannot be later than that cutoff. A later document belongs in a later review, even if it explains an earlier period.

Enter one common rent month in year-month form, such as 2026-09. The tool compares scheduled monthly base rent for that month. It does not compare a full year, a trailing period, or the amount collected during a month. The common month cannot follow the cutoff month.

Use the scope notes to describe the records selected and anything left out. A three-lease sample is not the same as a complete review of a building with fifty leases. State that distinction before looking at totals.

There is also a confirmation for distinct positions. Confirm it only after checking that the pairs do not overlap. A base lease and its amendment should not become two separate rent streams. If this remains unconfirmed, individual comparisons can still appear, but the combined dollar amounts remain withheld.

Enter Lease Records and Rent-Roll Sources

Give each pair a unique ID. For each side, choose whether a source was supplied. If supplied, enter a document reference and source date. The reference should let another reader locate the entry: file name, version, page, schedule, or row.

A source marked not supplied must have blank fields. This prevents hidden amounts from surviving behind a missing-source label. If you change an existing side to not supplied, either clear its fields or restore the supplied setting. The tool will not erase those values for you.

For a supplied source, other fields may remain blank when unknown. That includes rent, tenant, unit, term dates, and provision notes. Enter zero only when the source supports a zero amount for the chosen base-rent question. Blank and zero have different meanings.

Copy the source's facts carefully. Do not fill a missing expiration date by copying the other side just to make the records agree. If a later amendment controls a term, identify it in the lease source reference and describe the change in the notes.

Use one stable identifier for each distinct position. The tool rejects repeated unit or position text within either source side after simple case and space cleanup. That catches obvious duplicate entries. It cannot detect every overlap, such as two different labels for the same leased space.

Add a brief follow-up note even when the pair looks consistent. State what was checked, which question remains, or why the source was selected. Save the pair before entering the next one. Unsaved edits block analysis so the displayed result cannot silently ignore them.

Confirm Tenant Identity and Monthly Base Rent

Each pair has two manual confirmations. The first concerns the same tenant and lease position. The second concerns the same scheduled monthly base-rent basis in U.S. dollars. Choose confirmed, different, or unconfirmed for each.

A matching name is not proof of legal identity. For example, a parent name, a trading name, and a tenant subsidiary can refer to different legal roles. The text comparison only ignores capitalization and repeated spaces. It does not remove punctuation, expand abbreviations, search company records, or decide whether two entities are legally the same.

The dollar comparison requires both confirmations, both supplied sources, matching tenant and unit text, known rent amounts, and rent months that match the selected month. A missing condition withholds the subtraction and explains why.

Rent basis matters even when amounts look simple. One record may show annual rent, another monthly rent. One may include service charges, another only base rent. A third may show actual receipts after credits. Those amounts should not be forced into this tool's monthly base-rent fields without first resolving their meaning.

Suppose a source states annual base rent of $24,000. Dividing by twelve gives $2,000, but that does not establish the rent due in every month. A step increase, a partial term, or a free-rent period may change the monthly schedule. The tool performs no annual conversion or adjustment. Your source review must support the actual monthly entry.

Read Rent Differences and Missing Fields

Every compared field has one of three results: match, difference, or missing. Missing means at least one side lacks an entry. Two blanks therefore remain missing. They do not become a match.

Money entries are stored to the cent. A rent of 2400 and a rent of 2400.00 become the same amount. Negative inputs, currency symbols, commas, and more than two decimal places are rejected. Enter plain numbers, with a maximum of one billion dollars per rent field.

For an eligible pair, the calculation is rent-roll base rent minus lease base rent. A positive result means the rent-roll entry is higher. A negative result means the lease entry is higher. The sign does not say which document is right, how much cash is missing, or whether anyone breached a contract.

The summary counts pairs with differences, pairs with missing fields, eligible rent comparisons, and withheld rent comparisons. These groups are not all separate. One pair can contain both a different expiration date and a missing provision note. Adding the difference and missing counts would double-count that pair.

When distinct positions are confirmed, the tool adds only the eligible rent pairs. It shows their IDs beside the amounts. Excluded pairs remain outside the sum even if one side has a known rent. The result is a subtotal of the compared entries, not verified property revenue or collected cash.

Follow the Fictional Rent-Roll Example

Load the example to see three invented pairs for Maple Court. None represents a real tenant, sponsor, property, lease, or offering. The review cutoff is October 17, 2026, and the common rent month is September 2026.

Pair 101 has the same entered tenant and unit on both sides. Its lease entry is $2,400, while the rent roll says $2,450. Both comparison confirmations are set to confirmed for this invented exercise. The tool therefore shows a positive $50 rent difference.

Pair 102 has $1,800 on both sides. Its dollar difference is zero. Its expiration dates differ, however: August 31, 2027, in the lease entry and July 31, 2027, in the rent-roll entry. A renewal-option note appears only on the lease side. Equal rent has not resolved either of those questions.

Pair 103 has a $1,500 rent-roll entry, but its lease package was not supplied. Its rent subtraction is withheld. The known rent-roll amount is retained in the source data; it is not added to the matched subset.

Example result Amount or count
Saved pairs 3
Pairs with differences 2
Pairs with missing fields 2
Eligible rent pairs 2
Rent comparisons withheld 1
Eligible lease subtotal $4,200
Eligible rent-roll subtotal $4,250
Rent roll minus lease, eligible subset $50

The lease subtotal is $2,400 plus $1,800. The rent-roll subtotal is $2,450 plus $1,800. Adding pair 103's $1,500 would produce $5,750 on the roll side, but it would change the comparison to an unmatched set. The tool keeps that amount out.

A reviewer might ask for the current amendment for pair 101, the basis for pair 102's expiration date, and the missing lease package for pair 103. These are example follow-up questions, not findings that any actual record is wrong.

Review Lease Expiration and Renewal Provisions

Lease start and expiration dates can be later than the review cutoff. A contract may describe a future term. The tool checks that entered dates are real and that a start date does not follow its expiration. It does not decide whether a future term has become binding.

Two equal expiration dates still may not tell the whole story. A contract could include an early termination right, an extension option, or conditions that affect the end date. Use the provision notes to point to those clauses, then read the underlying terms with the appropriate adviser.

The tool compares provision notes as text after simple case and space cleanup. It does not decide whether differently worded clauses have the same legal effect. Nor does matching text prove that all relevant provisions were copied.

Take an invented renewal clause requiring written notice by a certain date. A rent roll might list only the potential extended expiration. Before treating that date as firm, ask what evidence shows the option was validly exercised. Save the answer and its source outside this text comparison if legal interpretation is needed.

This is also why no lease-expiration risk score appears. A count of different dates says little about the size of the rent, tenant quality, property costs, or replacement demand. The tool preserves the questions instead of assigning an unsupported investment grade.

Resolve Exceptions Without Losing the Evidence

Export the first review before replacing entries with corrected information. The tool does not maintain a permanent version history. An old export can help show which records you had and why you asked a question.

For each exception, identify the person or document needed to answer it. A missing source requires obtaining that source. A copying error requires a correction. A disputed term may require legal review. Those actions are different, even when each starts as a difference on this screen.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, discusses reasonable investigation of private placements by covered members. Its notice includes reviewing issuer claims and seeking primary documents or fuller explanations when needed. That supports the value of follow-up; it does not make a completed spreadsheet a compliance finding. FINRA Regulatory Notice 23-08

When an answer arrives, update the source reference, date, relevant field, and follow-up note together. If the answer is later than the old cutoff, create a later review. Do not backdate the evidence to make the earlier result look complete.

Recheck manual confirmations after a material change. The tool retains your selected confirmation values when you edit a saved pair. It cannot know whether a new document has changed the identity or rent basis you previously confirmed. Those judgments remain yours.

Use Filters and Export the Complete Review

After saving the pairs, select Compare saved pairs. You can display all pairs, only those with differences, those with missing fields, or those whose rent comparison was withheld. The filter changes the visible list, not the review's scope.

Both downloads contain all saved pairs, source notes, field results, and the eligible subset. JSON provides a structured record; text provides a readable report. Neither is an uploaded contract, a certified rent roll, or a verified statement from the property manager.

Changing review fields or pair entries clears the previous results and disables downloads. Save the edited pair and run the comparison again. This helps prevent an old export from being mistaken for the result of new inputs.

Replacing the example, clearing records, and deleting a pair require an on-page confirmation. Cancel preserves the current records. Clear pair editor discards that editor's contents but leaves saved pairs in place. The tool does not save automatically or import earlier downloads.

The input limit is 120,000 UTF-8 bytes after validation; each export is limited to one MiB. Long notes and non-English characters can use more space than a simple character count suggests. Use short source pointers rather than pasting entire contracts, and avoid unnecessary confidential tenant details.

Understand the Limits of DST Lease Due Diligence

A successful comparison establishes only what the entered fields show. The original sources may be incomplete, outdated, or copied incorrectly. A document date does not establish that every later change was included.

Scheduled rent is also different from collected rent. The OCC's multifamily discussion specifically calls for examining actual collections even where a rent roll suggests high occupancy. This tool does not inspect bank deposits, concessions, arrears, or collection records. OCC Commercial Real Estate Lending, printed page 122

The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, cautions that private placements can provide limited disclosure and be difficult to resell. An organized lease review does not remove those wider investment limits. SEC private-placement bulletin, updated September 21, 2026

Use the output alongside the broader DST due diligence evidence binder. Review debt, property condition, fees, governance, and the offering's fit separately. No return, tax result, fair value, occupancy rate, or sponsor ranking is calculated here.

FAQ

Does a Matching Rent Amount Prove the Lease Is Correct?

No. The tool compares entered amounts and selected fields. Matching rent can coexist with different dates, missing amendments, or incomplete provisions. Read the source records and resolve the relevant questions before relying on the entry.

Why Is a Rent Comparison Withheld?

The tool needs two supplied sources, known amounts, matching tenant and position text, the selected rent month, and your identity and rent-basis confirmations. Its explanation lists the missing conditions. A blank rent remains unknown, even when the other source supplies a number.

Can I Compare Annual Rent With Monthly Rent?

Not directly. This tool uses scheduled monthly base rent in USD for one month. It does not divide annual figures, apply rent increases, account for partial months, or handle free-rent schedules. Establish the relevant monthly amount from the source first.

Are the Combined Amounts the Property's Total Rent?

No. They include only the eligible entered pairs, and only when you confirm that the positions are distinct. The output lists the included IDs. Missing leases and other excluded pairs remain outside that subset, which is neither verified revenue nor cash collected.

Do Matching Provision Notes Mean the Contracts Are Equivalent?

No. The comparison only ignores capitalization and repeated spaces. It does not interpret clauses, detect omitted provisions, or decide whether an option was exercised. Legal meaning and completeness require review beyond the entered text.

Will a Filtered Download Omit Hidden Pairs?

No. Both download formats include every saved pair and the full review, regardless of the display filter. Check the review title, cutoff, common month, and source references before sharing the file.

Does This Tool Save My Review Automatically?

No. Export the completed review before leaving or clearing the page. There is no import or permanent history feature. To preserve a change trail, keep separate dated exports and retain the source documents through your normal recordkeeping process.

About Sequoia Research

Sequoia Research publishes educational research and practical tools for reviewing DST investments, sponsors, brokers, and source documents. This tool organizes manually entered evidence and limited arithmetic. It does not authenticate contracts, provide a credit rating, or replace legal, tax, or investment advice for a specific situation.

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