So many things can go wrong with a building in general. With residential properties that are still mortgaged the profit margins are very thin in most markets and you have to worry about major catastrophes at a property. The more properties you have the more you have to deal with.
So lets say you buy a $150k house with 20% down in an average neighborhood. What are your costs going to be? PITI + management/upkeep.
PITI is around $904/mo with a 4.5% interest rate (not owner-occupied, rate is a little higher than market), $2300/yr property taxes and $1200/yr homeowners insurance. I'm estimating the homeowners insurance based on my own insurance, it might be a little higher? Not sure on that.
I don't know what expenses for upkeep will be, lets call it $3k/yr for carpets and odd appliance failures and shit like that. Could probably get a better feel for this when we own a lot more properties.
So thats $13,848 a year to own this property. Break-even rent would be $1,154. To make 10%/yr on the 30k invested, we'd have to rent it for $1,404/mo and keep it rented most of the time.
The question is, can we do that? Can we minimize the time we spend on each one to make 10%? If I could make 10% on $30k by investing it this way I'd buy 30 of these properties tomorrow, and I have the cash to do it.
Going to do a test run of 5 properties and let it ride for a year, and see how it goes. Do I only rent to white people? Only females? Have credit requirements that would make Sanders blush? Would make it harder to rent out but probably higher quality tenants. Need to do some testing and figure it out.
Khane what catastrophes are you thinking about?
This is also discounting appreciation and equity, those are kinda bonuses in my book and shouldn't really be budgeted.