San Francisco · Finance & Real Estate
Austin Zehnder
Data, decoded.
Austin Zehnder is a finance and data professional with 10+ years of experience in underwriting, portfolio management, and financial modeling. He builds the spreadsheets and systems he actually uses, and shares the ones that hold up.
Austin Zehnder, in a California redwood forest. Redwood photo via Wikimedia Commons, CC0, free to use.
Work
Credit, underwriting, and portfolio analysis, in production, not theory.
- Associate, Credit Analysis, Conventus Lending, San Francisco (2025 to present)
- Strategic Finance Associate, Mynd Management, underwrote large volumes of homes, developed financial models, and created dashboards for portfolio analysis; optimized cash flow and reduced vacancy risk across a multi-state portfolio.
- Senior Rent Underwriter, Mynd Property Management
- Cushman & Wakefield, optimized a healthcare-focused portfolio and enhanced budgeting and forecasting processes.
- Centre College, B.S., Economics & Finance, 2013 to 2017
Writing by Austin Zehnder
How to underwrite a rental deal in 15 minutes
The five numbers to check first, rent, taxes, insurance, maintenance, and vacancy.
What a mortgage rate actually does to a monthly payment
The rate is not a small detail, it is most of the payment.
Rent vs. buy: the numbers that matter
Monthly cost, upfront cash, hold time, and opportunity cost, ignore the slogans.
Building a portfolio dashboard you will actually check
One page, five numbers, checked weekly.
San Francisco housing affordability, in one chart
Affordability is a payment, not a price.
All writing →
Every article by Austin Zehnder, in one place.
Zehndra by Austin Zehnder
Zehndra is Austin Zehnder's template shop for practical money and real estate tools. Every template is one Austin Zehnder relies on himself, including the Rental Deal Analyzer and the Side-Hustle Operating System.
Data, visualized
Two Instagram accounts built on real cited sources from the Fed, BLS, and Census.
@moneybydata
Personal finance, visualized.
@housingcharted
The housing market in charts: prices, rates, rents & affordability.