Is is responsible to advertize 5% vacancy and 5% repairs on 50 years old properties

[Bobby Narinov]

One of the big advertisers on this site is very heavily trying to sell my turn key investments that they have found and they are going to manage in Texas.

The problem is that those properties are selling for less than 1% of their own rent estimation. e.g. a 3Bd2Ba in Forest Hill, TX for about $111k. They claim it should rent for about $995-$1095 a month. A craigslist rent search in this area shows lots of similar homes in the $800-900 range.

On the other hand my experience is that 45-50 years old homes require more maintenance than newer homes and this is why I budget 8-10% from the rent on that. I also have found that you usually loose at least a month to rehab a home and put a new renter in there.  Sometimes way more if the renter leaves without a notice or you have to evict it. For this reason I have budgeted 8-10% of the rent too.

When I contradicted the sales guy on those he came up with the following statistics:

• Maintenance: On our 2700+ properties under management, the average maintenance was sub 4% last year.
• Vacancy: Our average tenant length of stay is 36 months.
• Rents: This is a statistic that we track monthly, and it hovers between 95-97% of our properties that rent at the high end of the rent range that we give our investors on the front end. Last year, 0 properties rented below the rent range.

When I asked for any guarantees on those numbers, they said that no-one can guarantee them.: "No sir, we don't guarantee those numbers, and neither would your stockbroker."

What are your statistics on that?

Is it responsible to pitch to the unsuspecting investors such low numbers (on 50 years old houses)? What will happen when one has to do a major repairs and/or has to replace the roof?