My largest financial estimate "miss" over my first 4 deals.

[Nick Horob]

In the last 18 months, my partner and I have bought 4 properties (24 units) in Fargo, ND or Moorhead, MN ("twin" cities).  

In my initial financial models, I was using 10% of gross rents as an estimate of ongoing maintenance/capex.  So far, just our maintenance requests are costing us 14% of gross rents.  This is 2x what I thought it was going to be.

A couple questions.

• How does this compare to you?
• Is there software available to view maintenance on a per unit and a per "event type" basis (eg. I'd like to see how many leaky faucets we've had over the last year, etc).  I'd like more visibility into our costs than on a per building basis.
• Do you know of any maintenance-specific mobile apps that allow tenants to report issues, dispatch issues to maintenance personal, notify tenants of the status of their requests, and get feedback from the tenant when it's finished?

Thanks in advance.

Nick