Levelvalethe honest figure before the deal

We don't buy square metres

Published · Figures checked: October 8, 2026 · 3 min read

In short

The heart chooses the apartment, and that is right. But while your heart is choosing, the seller is counting. A number from the calculator gives you what a dream cannot: an argument at the negotiating table.

Straight Talk from a Realtor · a 2-minute read

Nobody buys square metres. Metres are for the builder and the tax office. You are buying something else.

You are buying the morning when you wake up and see exactly this light on exactly this wall. A child's first steps across this floor. Friends around this table. Neighbours you are glad to greet. The view from the window, or rather what you feel when you look at it. The pleasure of choosing wallpaper, arguing over the colour of the kitchen and making up on the sofa that finally arrived.

That is why buying an apartment almost always goes through the heart. And that is right. Your peace of mind is worth paying for. A dream is worth paying for. I do not know a single person who, twenty years on, regrets the Persian rug they bought out of love.

The trouble starts in one place. While your heart is choosing, the seller is counting. The seller knows you have already pictured the child on this floor, and knows that at this moment the number in the listing stops mattering to you.

There is an old trader's saying: there are always two people at a market, and each is sure they got the better of the other. The seller arrives with numbers. You arrive with a dream. Guess who leaves happier.

Levelvale does not ask you to stop dreaming. It asks for one thing only: run the numbers before you fall in love for good. Inside the calculator everything is cold and honest: price, rent, taxes, empty months, agent, furniture. For a $200,000 apartment, for example, we allowed $10,000 for furniture. That is a lower bound. Your parquet that took six months to arrive from France is not in there. Your real metre will cost more than the calculated one, and that is fine: you are paying for your life, not for capital growth.

The number first, then the dream
a calculation before the negotiation gives you an argument: "By its income this apartment is worth this much. Explain the difference"

But the number from the calculator gives you something a dream does not have. An argument. You go to the developer or the seller and say: "By its income this apartment is worth this much. Explain the difference." Sometimes they explain it. Sometimes they lower the price. Either way you have won: you either understood what you are paying for, or you paid less.

And then go and do all your crazy things. The rug, the shelves, the parquet. A dream bought at a sensible price is no worse. It is even sweeter.

How to calculate the apartment, not the price tag: The "10% yield" apartment: what you really get to keep

Run the numbers before you sign. Two minutes of cold numbers, and then you can go back to dreaming.

The calculator with this property's figures

The same calculation as on the home page. Change any figure — the answer recounts.

REAL ESTATE I YIELD I TAXES · Levelvale

Sources

This is a calculation, not investment, tax or legal advice.

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