Is this a good FIRST deal?

[Thomas L.]

Hi! I have been listening to the podcast and reviewing properties for several months now, so it's time to get started. I live in Belgium, so the market is a little different, but the numbers seem to work out for me. 

So.. I found a 5-unit property within a half hour drive from where I live. All units are small studio apartments. So they have one room which is both the kitchen, bedroom and living room. They also all have their own bathroom, so 2 rooms in total.

They are all rented out for about €500 (= $585) a month. So €500 x5 = €2500 / month or €30.000/year.
The owner wants €250.000 (=$292k) for the building and is not willing to negotiate much about the price.
In my area, that's the price you pay for an average older house.

Here is the good thing: I can get a loan at my local bank at 1.18% interest (no typo) over a 25 year period! Which means I would pay €962/month to the bank. There are other costs too:

-  +-€500/m on utilities (water, electr, gas..)

- €60/m insurance

- €120/m in taxes

In total I would have €1642 in fixed expenses each month, with about €858 left to cover repairs and maintenance costs. Renovating the apartments might bring in an extra €50/m per apartment but not more. They are really small.. about 35m2 or 114 square feet. I think I can also find a way to lower the utility cost a little.

Anyway, the numbers seem to make sense to me, so why do i want your advise?

- low income tenants might ask a lot of my attention. In Belgium it's also really hard to evict someone.. on average it takes about 6 months, even if they don't pay rent.

- my only deal this year. To buy the €250k property, I will have to come up with about 15% closing/acquisition costs. That's a lot, but it's just the way it is out here. I have that money saved up, but because of the high costs I will only be able to buy one deal this year. This is not a flip, so I won't be able to pull it out soon.

Good to know: this is the only apartment building I have found that has such a high income vs purchase price..

What do you guys think? Should I do this?



 

[Thomas L.]

Update: Many months later the property was still on the market and I bought it :) In the meantime, the owner did some renovations. I bought it for 269k. Total rent each month: €2800. The monthly costs for utilities will be more like +-  350. I have a 100% loan on 25y at 1.4 variable rate (can max double), which comes down to about €1070/m. The property was appraised by the bank at 317k, so in their eyes it's only a 85% loan on value.

The insurance each month is €45 and taxes about €120, so if all tenants pay (currently the problem), than this deal should cash flow up to €1.215/m net! As I explained in my first post, I invested about 36k into the property. So that's a 40% ROI.

Now, I inherited these tenants and not all of them are paying, so let's see how that goes. But I'm really happy I finally got it closed :) yay