What are the basics of apartment rental finances?
Well for starters you want to rent it for more than the apartment costs you.  Aside from mortgage you have insurance, and maintenance costs.  If you are going to have a long term rental property you need to make a profit, or at a bare minimum break even.  Personally I would not like the break even option because there are unexpected costs that turn break even into a severe loss. Basically the way I would calculate the minimum rent for an apartment I owned would be: (Payment + (taxes/12) + (other costs you provide) + (Expected annual maintenance costs)) * 100% + % of profit I want to make. This is a business arrangement.  Unless you are recouping some of your losses in another manner then it is bad business to maintain a business relationship that is costing you money.  The only thing that may be worth considering is what comparable rentals go for in your area.  You may be forced to take a loss if the rental market in your area is depressed.  But I suspect that right now your condo is renting at a steal of a rate.  I would also suspect that the number you get from the above formula falls pretty close to what the going rate in your area is.
I used to own a few investment properties, so I'm pretty familiar with this.  As MrChrister mentions, lenders see investment mortgages as higher risk. People who fall into financial trouble are much more likely to let their investment properties go than their personal residence.  Consequently, the interest rates and downpayment requirements are generally higher. Typically a mortgage for an investment property will require 20% down, vs. as low as 3-5% down for a personal residence.  With excellent credit and some shopping around, you could probably do 10% down.  Interest rates are typically about a half-percent higher as well. You'll also find that the more investment properties you have, the harder it becomes to finance new ones.  Banks look at debt-to-income ratios to determine if you are over extended.  Typically banks like to see that your housing payments are less than 20% or so of your income.  However, with rental properties, housing payments generally account for far more than 20% of your rental income.  Other income you have can offset that, but after buying 2-3 houses or so, your DTI generally creeps into the range where lenders are uncomfortable lending to you anymore.  This is why you'll find that many rental properties are bought on land contracts with owner financing rather than with mortgages. No. This logic is dangerous.  The apples to apples comparison between renting and buying should be between similar living arrangements. One can't (legitimately) compare living in a 600 sq ft studio to a 3500 sq ft house.  With the proposal you offer, one should get the largest mortgage they qualify for, but that can result in a house far too big for their needs. Borrowing to buy just what you need makes sense. Borrowing to buy a house with rooms you may never visit, not a great idea.  By the way, do the numbers. The 30 year rate is 4%. You'd need a $250,000 mortgage to get $10,000 in interest the first year, that's a $312,000 house given an 80% loan. On a median income, do you think it makes sense to buy a house twice the US median?  Last, a portion of the tax savings is 'lost' to the fact that you have a standard deduction of nearly $6,000 in 2012. So that huge mortgage gets you an extra $4000 in write-off, and $600 back in taxes.  Don't ever let the Tax Tail wag the Investing Dog, or in this case the House Dog.  Edit - the investment return on real estate is a hot topic. I think it's fair to say that long term one must include the rental value of the house in calculating returns. In the case of buying of way-too-big house, you are not getting the return, it's the same as renting a four bedroom, but leaving three empty.  If I can go on a bit - I own a rental, it's worth $200K and after condo fee and property tax, I get $10K/yr. A 5% return, plus whatever appreciation. Now, if I lived there, I'd correctly claim that part of my return is the rental value, the rent I don't pay elsewhere, so the return to me is the potential growth as well as saved rent. But if the condo rents for $1200, and I'd otherwise live in a $600 apartment with less space, the return to me is lost. In my personal case, in fact, I bought a too big house. Not too big for our paycheck, the cost and therefore the mortgage were well below what the bank qualified us for. Too big for the need. I paid for two rooms we really don't use. It may depend on the rental agreement you signed, some agreements may include clauses that allow for early termination so check your agreement carefully. Where there is an early termination clause included it will usually have some sort of notice period or financial penalty associated with it.  For example you may have to give a couple of months notice and pay rent up to the end of that period or be able to pay some sort of one-off penalty. As a more practical example I broke a US rental agreement early last Autumn and had two early termination options in my rental agreement: In my case we chose the second option since we were actually moving out of the country and it was easier to have our US finances completely settled. I'm now planning on breaking another agreement because I'm in the process of purchasing a property and the purchase will likely go through before the lease expires.  In this case the early termination clause requires 2 months notice i.e. we will have to give 2 months notice and pay rent for those two months (unless we are less than 2 months from the end of the lease). As @BrenBarn points out you should also check the laws for the jurisdiction your rental agreement is in to understand what your rights and options are if your agreement does not have an early termination clause "I don't know how many people ""a ton"" is, but if you are getting more than, say, 6 people who are qualified to rent, you've priced it too low. Better to ask for $1200, and have a potential tenant haggle or ask you to reduce the price than to have 6 people want it for $900.  It's worth it to run a credit report, and let that help you choose. I agree with Victor, a bidding war is appropriate for a house sale, not rental apartments.  You didn't mention your country, but I'd be sure to find out the local laws regarding tenant choice. You may not (depending where you are) discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, marital status, race, or religion." A lease payment is composed of an interest portion (borrowed money) and depreciation amount (purchase - residual). The Monthly payment is then Monthly Interest Cost + Monthly Depreciation Cost The Money Factor is used to estimate the amount of interest due in a single month of a lease so you can figure out the monthly payment. If you are borrowing $100,000 then over the entire loan of repayment from a balance of $100,000 to a balance of $0, the average amount you owed was $50,000 (1/2 of principal).   You are repaying this loan monthly (1/12 of a year) and percents are expressed as decimals (1/100). 6 * 1/2 (for principal) * 1/12 (for monthly) * 1/100 (to convert percentage from 6% to .06)  = 6 * 1/2400. 2400 is the product of 3 consecutive conversion (1/2 * 1/12 * 1/100) to convert from an interest rate to a money factor. 6/2400 = Money factor of 0.0025 which can be multiplied against the total amount being borrowed to know what the monthly interest would roughly equal. Some Money Factor info: https://www.alphaleasing.com/resources/articles/MoneyFactor.asp If I understand you right, what you need is the minimum amount in the account until your next deposit.  So for example, if today is the 10th and you get paid on the 15th, how much do I need to have in the account, so I know how much I can spend?  That amount should be all of the bills that will be paid between today and the 15th. An alternative would just to keep a running balance and see what the minimum value is. My personal finance software does that for me, but it's possible, although a little more complicated, in Excel.  You'd have to find the date of the next deposit, and do a SUMIF looking for dates between today and that date.  That's about as far as I can get without getting off-topic. You are neglecting a few very important things around real estate transactions in Belgium So in the end a 300K building may cost you more than 340K, let's take some unexpected costs into account and use 350K for remainder of calculation. Even worse if it's newly built (which I doubt) the first percentage is 21% (VAT) instead of 10%. All these costs can be checked on the useful site www.hoeveelkostmijnhuis.be Now, aside from that most banks will and actually have to demand you pay part of all this yourself. So you can't do 5*60K (or 5*70K now). Mostly banks will only finance up to about 90% of the value of the building, so 90% of 300K, which is 270K (5*54K), the other 80K (5*16K) you have to pay yourselves. But it could be the bank goes as low as 80%. Another part to complicate the loan is how much you can pay a month. Since the mortgage crisis they're very strict on this. There are lots of banks that will not allow you to make monthly payments of more than 33% of your monthly income when you are going to live there. This is a nuisance even when buying one house, you want to buy 2. Odds seem low they'll accept high monthly payments because you either need an additional loan or need to pay rent, so don't count on a 5y deal. Now this is all based on a single loan, it will probably be a bit different with multiple loans. However, it is unlikely any bank will accept this, even if all loans are with the same bank. You need to consider the basics of a real-estate loan: A bank trusts you can pay it off and if not they can seize the real-estate hoping to regain their initial investment. It's very hard to seize a complete asset if only one out of 5 loan-takers defected. You could  maybe do this with another less restrictive/higher risk type of loan but rates will be a lot higher (think 5-6% instead of 1.5%). And don't underestimate the running costs: for that price and 5 rooms in that city you're likely looking at an older building. Expect lots of cost for maintenance and keeping the building according to code. Also expect costs for repairs (you rent to students...). You'll also have to pay quite a bit of money on insurances and of course on real estate taxes (which are average in Ghent). Also factor in that currently there is not a housing shortage for Ghent students so you might not always have a guaranteed occupation. Also take into account responsibility: if a fire breaks out or the house collapses or a gas leak occurs, you might be sued. It doesn't matter if you're at fault, it's costly and a big nuisance. Simply because you didn't think of any of this: don't do this. It's better to invest in real estate funds. But if you still think you can do better then all the landlords Ghent is riddled with, don't do it as a personal investment. Create a BVBA, put some investment in here (like 10-20K each), approach a bank with a serious business plan to get the rest of the money as a loan (towards a single entity - your BVBA) and get things going. When the money comes in you can either give yourselves a salary or pay out profits on the shares. You may be confused about how rich you can become because we as a nation tend to overestimate the profitability of real estate. It's really not that much better than other investments (otherwise everybody would only invest in real estate funds). There are a few things that skew our vision however: I'm surprised by all these complicated answers. Yes @Victor, you can create a form that asks people to put down their financial information but you want to be careful and not put off potential tenants by asking for too many details. Depending on the OP's typical tenants, an extensive background and credit check may not be necessary. For example, if I have proof that someone is a graduate student at the local university, that's usually good enough for me because I am willing to bet that they will follow my contract.  Bidding war doesn't sound doable, you advertise a price correct? You can only be haggled down not up.  So my suggestion is to look at other rental advertisements in the area. Compare what you're offering (location, quality of house, cleanliness, amenities, etc) to the competition and price accordingly. If you're getting a flood of interest, then you're probably pricing below the average price in your area. Or you live in an area where demand is just much higher than supply, in which case you can also raise your rent.