How many deals does it take to get to 200k per year?

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I need some help here.  I am trying to set up a better vision for my investing.  As of now it's just been flipping a house here and there.  I have a pretty good J.O.B. so at this pint its been additional fun money for me.  That has been fine and all but I am ready to get a lot more serious with it and want to set a goal to make 200k per year.

I also would like this to preferably come from "safer" investments - if that even exists.  I want to avoid the classic way in which RE Investors go out - over leveraging.  Rather than over leverage and be surprised by a down turn I figure apartments may fare better.  So if I were to work backwards would it look like this...?

200k in Apartment income = $100 per door = 2,000 apartment units = work on flipping to build enough money start buying apartment units.  Maybe 60+ apartment units at a time.  i.e. Buy a 60 unit, then a 100 unit, 300 unit etc. until I get to 2,000.  I just feel there has to be a better way.  Would syndication or being part of a group i.e. Lifestyles, Brad Somrock etc. make it faster?  Maybe as a sponsor it would reduce the money needed and I could be rewarded more for putting the deals together?

Would it really take that many units to make 200k per year in apartment investing?

I'm sure there are others here that are actually achieving this - would you please help a guy out and chime in?

Best, 

-John

[Nick B.]

You're thinking in the right direction but your $100/door assumption is wrong. This number is used by some people as a cut-off point: "I won't do a deal if it does not cashflow at least $100/mo/door". 

First of all, cash flow per unit is irrelevant and so is the unit count. What's relevant is your cash-on-cash rate of return and your overall ROI which would consist primarily of capital gains.

If you want to have $200K/year income and your projected cash-on-cash is 8%, you need $2.5M in equity. That in turn would support $7.5M in debt giving you overall property value of $10M. In today's market this is 100-150 units depending on location and quality of asset.