How to find the right deal? / What is considered good cash flow?

[Chris Burgner]

Hey Everyone,

I'm just starting out in the real estate game and have a few questions.  First, I realize there is no one answer to "finding the right deal" or what is considered "good cash flow", but I'm sure there are some opinions on these forums regarding both, and I would imagine some people have opinions on what might be considered "bad" cash flow.

I've been looking at properties around 100k as potential investments.  Each time I get notifications for new properties in the areas I'm looking I take a look, run the numbers, and decide whether they're even worth my time to go look at.  Thus far, every time I run the numbers I come up with what are seemingly horrible cash flows.  I'm wondering if I'm potentially doing something wrong, if these are all actually bad deals, or maybe I'm missing something?  Let me illustrate with an example.

One property I looked at is 105k.  So, I typically run over to the zillow mortgage calculator (I like it a lot, has a bunch of features), and run the numbers.  

For this property, assuming a 4.1% interest rate, and 20% down, and $800/year insurance, I get:

$408/month principal & interest

$41/month taxes

$67/month insurance

$199/month HOA

total monthly: $715

Next, I head on over to rentometer (https://www.rentometer.com), to get an idea of how much the property might rent for, this particular property has the following results:
$921/month average, with 80% of properties in the area falling between $732 - $1110 per month.

Finally, I estimate my cash flow using this calculator (http://investfourmore.com/rental-property-cash-flo...), assuming a 15% maintenance factor, and a 10% vacancy factor (don't assume any property management for the moment, as I plan to do that myself).  Assuming a monthly rent of $950, and putting all the numbers I mentioned above, the monthly cash flow calculator comes out to be -$2.17, and that's not even with any property management added in!

Almost every property I have looked into results in something negative, or less than $50/month. I'm just not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is it the HOA that's killing me? Are these just not good investment properties? If so, how might I go about finding better properties (I can't seem to find any other properties in my area that don't have HOA fees around the same price point) ? What do people consider to be "good" cash flow?

Thank you in advance for any replies, it has been exciting learning about this stuff so far!

Chris