A spreadsheet vs BrickROI: an honest comparison for Canadian deals
Built by Nate Rempel, a Canadian real estate investor. The math is golden-tested to the penny against a CPA-audited spreadsheet.
A good rental spreadsheet is a real tool, and plenty of strong investors still run one. The question is not whether to drop it. The question is where it holds up on a Canadian deal and where it starts to cost you time and accuracy.
Where a spreadsheet is genuinely good
A spreadsheet you built yourself has one big advantage: you know exactly what every cell does. You can see the math, change an assumption, and trust the output because you wrote it. It costs nothing past the time you put in, it works offline, and it bends to whatever shape you want. For an investor running one deal a quarter, a clean template is often all you need.
If your spreadsheet already does the job and your deals are simple, this page is not here to talk you out of it. Keep what works.
Where it starts to cost you on a Canadian deal
The trouble is the Canadian rules. Most templates, including the ones sold inside courses, do not carry CMHC premiums, MLI Select point scoring, provincial rent-control rules, property taxes by city, or GST on new builds. These are not edge cases. A Calgary investor warned on a forum that CMHC premiums "can easily add $10k+ to your numbers." If that line is not in your sheet, it is a surprise you find at the lender meeting.
The rules also move. Rent-increase guidelines change every year. Property tax rates differ across 55-plus municipalities. A spreadsheet only knows what you last typed into it.
| Capability | Your spreadsheet | BrickROI |
|---|---|---|
| You can see and edit every formula | Yes | XLSX export with live formulas |
| CMHC insurance math | Only if you built it | Built in |
| MLI Select points scoring | Rarely | Yes |
| Provincial rent-control automation | No | Yes |
| Property taxes kept current | Manual lookups | 55 cities, live |
| GST handling on new builds | Rarely | Yes |
| Auto-fill from a Canadian listing URL | No | Yes |
| A second opinion on the specific deal | No | Deal Mentor |
| Lender PDF for Canadian banks | Format it yourself | One click |
| Time per deal | 30 to 90 minutes | About two minutes |
A better path, not a punchline
BrickROI runs the Canadian-rule math your template likely skips, then gives you the Deal Mentor for the what-ifs and a lender-ready PDF the broker can cross-check. The math is golden-tested to the penny against a CPA-audited spreadsheet, so you are not trading your trusted sheet for a black box.
And you do not have to give up your spreadsheet to use it. The XLSX export carries live formulas, so you can open it, follow every line, and keep your own tracking sheet beside it. The point is to stop hand-building the Canadian rules on every deal and to stop formatting the lender doc by hand.
See the Canadian math your template skips.
Paste a Canadian listing into BrickROI and compare it to your spreadsheet. See the CMHC and MLI Select paths your template did not include. Two minutes.
Run a deal first. The 14-day Pro trial is waiting inside the app, once you've seen what it does.
Spreadsheet questions
Is a spreadsheet good enough for analysing rental deals?
For one deal a quarter, a good spreadsheet is fine. The math is yours to trust. The trouble starts with Canadian rules like CMHC premiums, MLI Select scoring, and provincial rent-control rules, which most templates do not include and which change over time.
What does BrickROI do that my spreadsheet does not?
It carries the Canadian rules: CMHC math, MLI Select points, provincial rent-control rules, live property taxes for 55 cities, and GST on new builds. It auto-fills from a listing URL, gives you a Deal Mentor to talk the deal through, and outputs a lender-ready PDF.
Can I keep using my spreadsheet too?
Yes. Many investors run BrickROI to check the Canadian-rule math and generate the lender PDF, then keep their spreadsheet for personal tracking. The XLSX export carries live formulas you can cross-check.