Make better financial decisions in your real estate business.
Practical guidance on taxes, bookkeeping, deal analysis, financing, entity structure and building wealth — organized by the six disciplines every real estate business has to run.
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Real estate is a business. Run the financial side like one.
Most people come to real estate through a property rather than through a business. The purchase gets months of attention. The financial system that has to run afterwards arrives in pieces, usually when somebody asks for something — a lender wanting two years of returns, an accountant wanting a chart of accounts, a tenant handing over a deposit that needs somewhere to sit.
Builders Finance teaches that second half: the decisions that determine what you actually keep, and how they fit together.
Choose your path
Short-Term Rentals
Revenue is earned operationally rather than collected, the cost stack is longer than most owners expect, and the tax treatment turns on how the property is used rather than on what it is.
Long-Term Rentals
A year holds few transactions and a handful of choices that set the next decade — the loan, the structure, the hold. Most get made by default, and a default costs years later.
Six financial disciplines. One framework for your real estate business.
The same six run through every kind of real estate business. What changes is the order they arrive in and the weight each one carries.
Deal Analysis
Whether a property will earn enough, worked out before you buy.
Financing
How to borrow, how much, and when not to.
Entity Structure
How to hold a property, and what each structure protects.
Bookkeeping & Reporting
Books that hold up for taxes, lenders and your own decisions.
Tax Strategy
What the tax rules allow, and what it takes to rely on them.
Wealth & Exit
What your equity is earning, and what an exit costs.
Start with the decision in front of you
Most readers arrive with one question. Each of these is a full guide, and each sits in a discipline you can then work through from the start.
- Read the guide →
Can my short-term rental losses offset my W-2 income?
The short-term rental exception to the passive loss rules, the tests it turns on, and what disqualifies most owners who assume they qualify.
- Read the guide →
Does this deal actually pencil?
What a defensible underwrite contains, which assumptions do the damage, and the point at which a property stops being worth buying.
- Read the guide →
Should I put my rental in an LLC?
What the entity does and does not protect, what it costs to run properly, and when insurance is the better answer to the same worry.
Financial guidance built for real estate owners
Builders Finance is written by Matt Nunn, who has spent two decades working on the financial side of businesses and real estate. The goal is to make complex financial decisions easier to understand and easier to act on.
Everything here is educational. The guides explain how a decision works and what it turns on; where the answer depends on your own facts, they say so.
About Builders Finance →
Builders Finance · A letter for owners and operators
What changed, why it matters, and one financial idea that makes you a better real estate operator.
- Operator BriefWhat changed, and whether it touches you.
- The Big IdeaOne financial idea, explained properly.
- What to Do NextA concrete next step, not a reading list.
- Go DeeperTwo or three guides from the library.