Maintenance costs in Bergen County NJ

[Andrew Giunta]

I am looking at investing in a portfolio of buy and hold mostly turn key properties in the town I grew up in New Jersey. I'm not in a rush to buy and looking to pick them up over the next year or so im just trying to get a good handle on what I can be expecting in terms of maintenance. I'm looking for 3-4 bd 2 ba and prices between 600k-650k. Taxes are around 12k-13k on those houses but rents currently are around 3.8k-4.3k. Its in an upscale area, one of the best public school districts in the state/country and a suburb of NYC.

A lot of demand is coming from NYC people who want to raise their children here and I see that only continuing as people will probably be forced to go in to an office 3ish days a week. I'm paying cash and looking to acquire about 5 properties. My goal is a 4% cap rate and this is mostly my fall back retirement real estate portfolio. I dont plan on selling these properties ever. I'm budgeting 15% for maintenance but ill try and do most of the easy stuff myself.  Does anyone else in the Bergen county area have relatively well maintained properties and insight to what their maintenance costs are ? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.