Operating expenses for good deals

[Jennie Jones]

My husband and I want to purchase a 2nd rental property. We have been listening to the podcast and reading the books. It seems like the advice when running the calculators is to budget $100 per unit each for cap ex, management fees, and maintenance and 5% for vacancy. Is this what others are doing?

We have run between 10-15 properties and have yet to find one that flows when using these percentages. Have we just not run numbers on enough properties yet?

Is it dangerous to lower the percentages for these operating expenses?