---
title: "Guide"
url: https://dwellingsdigest.com/guide
description: "A plain reading key for the measures Dwelling's Digest quoted: typical rent, landlord concessions, capitalisation rate, opportunity zones, debt maturities and housing."
published: 2026-09-06
updated: 2026-09-06
---

# Guide

Published 2026-09-06

The digest used the same handful of measures every week. This page sets out what each one counts, in plain terms.

**Typical rent**: The mid-point asking rent across a market's active listings in a given month. It moves with what is being advertised, so it can shift when the mix of available homes changes even if no existing lease changes.

**Landlord concession**: A benefit offered in place of a lower advertised rent: a free month, waived parking, or a covered fee. The share of listings carrying one is read as a softness signal, because the headline rent stays put while the effective rent falls.

**Capitalisation rate**: Annual net operating income divided by price, written as a percentage. It expresses the income yield implied by a price, which is why the same building carries a different rate in a different market.

**Opportunity zone**: A designated census tract in which reinvested capital gains received deferred federal tax treatment. Coverage of these tracts usually tracks how much capital was placed rather than what was built.

**Debt maturity**: The date a commercial mortgage balance falls due and must be repaid or refinanced. When many loans mature in the same period the cluster is described as a maturity wall.

**Housing starts**: The count of privately owned residential units on which construction began in a month, normally published as a seasonally adjusted annual rate, which is why a monthly figure reads in the hundreds of thousands.

None of this is guidance on a purchase, a sale or a loan; it is a reading key for the figures the editions quote.

[Where the numbers come from →](https://dwellingsdigest.com/resources)