Rental Property Reserves

[Brandon Koser]

Right now I have a few properties and I am putting offers on more. Luckily I don't need the income from the rental properties to live off of yet so what I've been doing is channeling all the funds after PITI and management (and charged maintenance for that month) into separate accounts for each property. My question then, is there a good time to stop doing that? For instance, if I stashed away 10% of the property value or a certain fixed amount in the account, can I then start diverting funds to a general account and snowballing the excess funds onto individual properties or as personal income? I understand all our models account for the various expenses ,capex, vacancies, etc. but they usually run in perpetuity to put away a certain amount every month. At what point does the BP community feel it is appropriate to not do this (aka what size safety net) where we no longer have to worry about the monthly flows for an individual property? I understand it may be personal risk tolerance preferences, but if there is a general consensus or rule of thumb that would help. Thanks