What does real estate underwriting software actually do?
Real estate underwriting software turns a deal's source documents into a financial model and the documents an investment committee reads. Four jobs sit inside that: extracting figures from an offering memorandum, rent roll and operating statement; computing a cash flow, debt structure and return set correctly; letting an analyst change any assumption and see everything recompute; and producing an Excel workbook and a memo that reconcile to the model. A tool that does three of the four sends you back to a spreadsheet.
The category, stated plainly
Every acquisitions team already has an underwriting process. It runs on a spreadsheet built by somebody who left, copied per deal, and edited until it produces a number. The spreadsheet is rarely the problem. The problem is the re-keying that happens before the model starts, and the version drift that happens after it.
Software in this category is trying to remove those two problems without removing the analyst's control over the model, and those two goals pull against each other. Every template that guarantees a consistent answer also constrains the deal you can express, and every tool that lets you express anything gives up some of the consistency. Where a given product sits on that tradeoff is the thing to work out on your own deals, and it is not something a feature list will tell you.
Where AI belongs, and where it does not
Reading a scanned rent roll is a language problem and a genuinely good use of a model. Computing an internal rate of return is not. A language model does arithmetic by predicting plausible text, which means it can produce a number that is close, confident and wrong, and it can produce a different number the second time you ask.
The line worth holding is that AI proposes values and a deterministic engine computes results. Every proposed value should arrive with the document and page it came from, and a human should confirm it before it enters the model. Determinism is checkable: run the same inputs twice and see whether you get the same answer.
What to test before you buy anything
Take a real deal with a messy rent roll and run it. Not the vendor's demo deal.
- Does the same input produce the same output twice
- Can you edit every assumption, or only the ones the template anticipated
- Does each figure show the formula and the inputs behind it
- Does an extracted number carry its source document and page
- Does the Excel export contain live formulas, or pasted values
- Does it handle the asset classes you actually buy, not just multifamily
- Can it price the deal backwards, solving for the bid that hits your return
- What happens on a scanned PDF and on a photograph of a page
The Excel question
Any serious tool has to export a workbook that a lender, a partner or an investment committee can open and interrogate. A PDF is a conclusion. A workbook on live formulas is an argument somebody else can check, and the ability to check it is most of why institutional real estate still runs on spreadsheets.
An export of pasted values is a screenshot with more steps.
Where Altyst sits
Altyst reads the documents a deal already arrives with, in PDF, Excel, CSV, Word, plain text or a photograph of a page, including scanned pages through OCR. It proposes each extracted value with its source and a confidence signal for review, then a deterministic engine in exact decimal arithmetic computes the model. Editing any assumption recomputes returns, cash flow, debt and the downside case at once, and clicking a figure shows the formula behind it.
It covers multifamily, single-family and short-term rental, office, medical office, retail, industrial, flex, warehouse, self-storage, mixed-use, hotel, and land or development, each with the leasing, debt and returns that asset class needs. Outputs are an Excel workbook on live formulas, a one-page investment memo, an editable PowerPoint deck, and lender and offering packages, all reconciled to the model.
It is a paid subscription with no free tier. The current plans, the per-additional-deal rate, and each plan's monthly ceiling on new deals are all on the pricing page, which is the only place those numbers are published.
Related questions
What is real estate underwriting software?
Software that converts a property's source documents, such as an offering memorandum, rent roll and trailing operating statement, into an editable financial model with cash flow, debt, returns and scenario analysis, and then produces the Excel and PDF outputs an investment committee reviews.
Can AI underwrite a real estate deal?
AI is well suited to reading documents and proposing values, and poorly suited to performing the calculation. A language model produces arithmetic by predicting text, so it can return a confident wrong figure and a different figure on a second attempt. The reliable pattern is AI for extraction with a deterministic engine for the math.
Does underwriting software replace Excel?
It replaces the re-keying and the version drift, not the workbook. Any tool used at an institutional level still has to export a workbook on live formulas, because a lender or an investment committee needs to interrogate the math rather than accept a rendered conclusion.
What should you test when evaluating underwriting software?
Run a real deal with a messy rent roll rather than the vendor's demo. Check that identical inputs produce identical outputs, that every assumption is editable, that each figure exposes its formula, that extracted values carry a source document and page, and that the Excel export contains live formulas rather than pasted values.
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