Don't Become a Property Hoarder or a Door Counter

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Don't Become a Property Hoarder or a Door Counter

Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes

I have been seeing this a lot lately: people who hold on to underperforming properties because they add to their door count or to their self-worth as real estate investors. If you don't like buying hoarders' houses, don't be a property hoarder. A property hoarder keeps properties just to keep them. See the old mom-and-pop investors in their sixties that you are trying to buy off-market properties from.

This is like people who buy for cash flow but don't realize that with the best cash flow comes capital expenditures and tenant issues. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Appreciation is great, but not when all of that appreciation is eaten by the repairs you aren't doing. It's ok to sell properties. It's ok to sell properties at a loss (you get the downpayment back to repurpose into something better).

If you have four or more properties, this is what I would do (I just posted part of this as an answer to someone and thought it would make a good post):

1. Rank them from best to worst in cash flow

2. Rank them from best to worst in how much you like them

*3. Rank them from best to worst in management cost

*4. Rank them from closest to farthest in proximity

5. Rank them from worst to best in capital expenditures expected

*optional, not always necessary

Add those numbers together for each property. The lowest number is your best property, and the highest number is your worst property. Sell your worst property first. Then, take that money and repurpose it into something better.

Door culture is crazy. If you own ten doors and six aren't cash-flowing, why do you want to hold on to them if there isn't overwhelming appreciation coming? Don't be a property hoarder.

Are you guys doing this or seeing this? Who wants to sell their worst-performing property and turn it into a better asset?

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Marcus Auerbach
Investor 路 Milwaukee - Mequon, WI 路 Member since 2010 路 5k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
1y

Your goals change. In the beginning, it's all about buying more deals with not much capital and frankly, maybe that's not the worst thing, because you learn a lot. Probably even more from the bad deals..

Long term you are better off with better real estate. Financially, but also mentally. Fortunately, I was thinning my herd back in I think 2014 or so by getting rid of a few (experimental) investments in cheaper neighborhoods. They were not terrible, some people would call them C minus, and it wasn't even that much about financial considerations at the time (appreciation was not a thing back then in Milwaukee) but just not what I wanted to own or manage, so I sold them to them tenants - after quite a bit of financial coaching to get them to qualify for a loan.

My standard advice is always to buy the best quality property you can afford. Cheap properties in Milwaukee are fools gold (especially for OOS investors, people literally will scoff at a rough listing and then someone will say: eh, someone from CA will buy it..) The problem is these homes are 60-120 years old and because of the low value neighborhoods, nobody has ever made any capital improvements beyond duct tape. You can kick the can down the road only so long, at some point capex exceeds cash flow.

Also, stay away from weird properties. Don't buy a 2br/1ba without a basement and no garage on a corner lot next to the scrap yard, just because it's cheap and the seller is motivated. That will be you one day.

Your future self will thank you (in 10 years).

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  • Joe VilleneuvePro Member
    Plymouth, MI 路 Member since 2013 路 13k+ posts 路 19k+ votes
    1y

    This is an excellent post. Should be read, and understood by all. REI is about collecting dollar$, not properties. If you want to collect properties, there's a much cheaper way. Take pictures of all the properties you like, regardless if they will make you money, and regardless of the cost. Transfer these pics to your computer. Then set them up as your screensaver.

    8Reply
  • Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
    OP
    Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @Joe Villeneuve:

    This is an excellent post. Should be read, and understood by all. REI is about collecting dollar$, not properties. If you want to collect properties, there's a much cheaper way. Take pictures of all the properties you like, regardless if they will make you money, and regardless of the cost. Transfer these pics to your computer. Then set them up as your screensaver.


    Thank you. Everyone is looking for a quick fix or an accumulation, but sometimes, you need to take a break and survey what you have. Then dump the chumps.

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  • Jeff Allen
    Real Estate Broker 路 Omaha NE 路 Member since 2019 路 30 posts 路 31 votes
    1y
    I sold my least favorite multi unit a couple of years ago and exchanged it for a 2 BR rental in AZ. It doesn't make much money and I need to check on it for a couple of months every winter. Best move I ever made.
    7Reply
  • Jon K.
    Rental Property Investor 路 Perry Hall, MD 路 Member since 2016 路 586 posts 路 598 votes
    1y
    Quote from @Jonathan Greene:

    I have been seeing this a lot lately: people who hold on to underperforming properties because they add to their door count or to their self-worth as real estate investors. If you don't like buying hoarders' houses, don't be a property hoarder. A property hoarder keeps properties just to keep them. See the old mom-and-pop investors in their sixties that you are trying to buy off-market properties from.

    This is like people who buy for cash flow but don't realize that with the best cash flow comes capital expenditures and tenant issues. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Appreciation is great, but not when all of that appreciation is eaten by the repairs you aren't doing. It's ok to sell properties. It's ok to sell properties at a loss (you get the downpayment back to repurpose into something better).

    If you have four or more properties, this is what I would do (I just posted part of this as an answer to someone and thought it would make a good post):

    1. Rank them from best to worst in cash flow

    2. Rank them from best to worst in how much you like them

    *3. Rank them from best to worst in management cost

    *4. Rank them from closest to farthest in proximity

    5. Rank them from worst to best in capital expenditures expected

    *optional, not always necessary

    Add those numbers together for each property. The lowest number is your best property, and the highest number is your worst property. Sell your worst property first. Then, take that money and repurpose it into something better.

    Door culture is crazy. If you own ten doors and six aren't cash-flowing, why do you want to hold on to them if there isn't overwhelming appreciation coming? Don't be a property hoarder.

    Are you guys doing this or seeing this? Who wants to sell their worst-performing property and turn it into a better asset?

    Love it. I just went through a similar exercise. Just this week I created a spreadsheet for my portfolio with estimated equity for each property. I also have columns for cash flow (true cash flow after historic avg expenses) and the most recent month's debt paydown. That allows me to show ROI from both a cash flow perspective as well as total ROI (cash flow + debt paydown) when compared with the estimated equity.

    The results were eye opening... there's a few on there that I'm likely selling off as a result of that exercise and a few others I'm going to do a cash out on. I'm not done with my estimates yet but I'm likely coming out a couple to a few thousand ahead per month when I'm done repositioning everything. It was definitely worth the time investment.

    2Reply
  • Stuart UdisPro Member
    Attorney 路 Philadelphia 路 Member since 2018 路 2k+ posts 路 3k+ votes
    1y

    Unfortunately there's a ton of online content teaching novice investors that reaching XYZ number of doors equates to financial independence. Meanwhile that guidance pushes many investors towards purchasing in areas where they do nothing but accumulate terrible assets solely because they are inexpensive. Sadly these tend to be some of the most difficult properties to sell. 

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  • David Krulac
    Mechanicsburg, PA 路 Member since 2013 路 3k+ posts 路 2k+ votes
    1y

    @Jonathan Greene  Agree 100%.  I do a procedure every year at tax preparation time.  I evaluate the performance of every income generating property that I own.  I call the process "thinning the herd", and each year I evaluate the property performance and either take actions to increase the individual property performance or sell the under performer.  For example I sold 2 properties in the same town that was more than 30 minutes away, just because of the travel time to get there and return.  Another time I sold a property that had no off street parking, because tenants didn't like not having no place to park their cars except the street. This resulted in longer times to re-rent and well as reducing the rental pool. The effect of this process is that the portfolio is constantly improving by retaining the best properties and jetison the under performers.

    I've bought and sold over 1,000 properties, and people always ask me "How many doors?"  Honestly I never know precisely, as I'm constantly buying and selling, and frankly I neither know or care. I bought a house last week and am selling a house next week, but I don't know how many doors I have today, unless I effort a count.  Its either "enough" or "too many" depending on what's going on today.  But truthfully I don't know!

    9Reply
  • Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
    OP
    Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @Jon K.:
    Quote from @Jonathan Greene:

    I have been seeing this a lot lately: people who hold on to underperforming properties because they add to their door count or to their self-worth as real estate investors. If you don't like buying hoarders' houses, don't be a property hoarder. A property hoarder keeps properties just to keep them. See the old mom-and-pop investors in their sixties that you are trying to buy off-market properties from.

    This is like people who buy for cash flow but don't realize that with the best cash flow comes capital expenditures and tenant issues. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Appreciation is great, but not when all of that appreciation is eaten by the repairs you aren't doing. It's ok to sell properties. It's ok to sell properties at a loss (you get the downpayment back to repurpose into something better).

    If you have four or more properties, this is what I would do (I just posted part of this as an answer to someone and thought it would make a good post):

    1. Rank them from best to worst in cash flow

    2. Rank them from best to worst in how much you like them

    *3. Rank them from best to worst in management cost

    *4. Rank them from closest to farthest in proximity

    5. Rank them from worst to best in capital expenditures expected

    *optional, not always necessary

    Add those numbers together for each property. The lowest number is your best property, and the highest number is your worst property. Sell your worst property first. Then, take that money and repurpose it into something better.

    Door culture is crazy. If you own ten doors and six aren't cash-flowing, why do you want to hold on to them if there isn't overwhelming appreciation coming? Don't be a property hoarder.

    Are you guys doing this or seeing this? Who wants to sell their worst-performing property and turn it into a better asset?

    Love it. I just went through a similar exercise. Just this week I created a spreadsheet for my portfolio with estimated equity for each property. I also have columns for cash flow (true cash flow after historic avg expenses) and the most recent month's debt paydown. That allows me to show ROI from both a cash flow perspective as well as total ROI (cash flow + debt paydown) when compared with the estimated equity.

    The results were eye opening... there's a few on there that I'm likely selling off as a result of that exercise and a few others I'm going to do a cash out on. I'm not done with my estimates yet but I'm likely coming out a couple to a few thousand ahead per month when I'm done repositioning everything. It was definitely worth the time investment.


    This is it exactly. Sometimes when any money is plus we think it's good, but it's not when you can use that money to make more elsewhere with less cap ex. I think people overlook their own asset management too much, but not you!

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  • Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
    OP
    Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @Stuart Udis:

    Unfortunately there's a ton of online content teaching novice investors that reaching XYZ number of doors equates to financial independence. Meanwhile that guidance pushes many investors towards purchasing in areas where they do nothing but accumulate terrible assets solely because they are inexpensive. Sadly these tend to be some of the most difficult properties to sell. 


    Right. Not only is their cashflow estimate fake, but it's unsellable with the surprise cap ex or tax increase.

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  • Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
    OP
    Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @David Krulac:

    @Jonathan Greene  Agree 100%.  I do a procedure every year at tax preparation time.  I evaluate the performance of every income generating property that I own.  I call the process "thinning the herd", and each year I evaluate the property performance and either take actions to increase the individual property performance or sell the under performer.  For example I sold 2 properties in the same town that was more than 30 minutes away, just because of the travel time to get there and return.  Another time I sold a property that had no off street parking, because tenants didn't like not having no place to park their cars except the street. This resulted in longer times to re-rent and well as reducing the rental pool. The effect of this process is that the portfolio is constantly improving by retaining the best properties and jetison the under performers.

    I've bought and sold over 1,000 properties, and people always ask me "How many doors?"  Honestly I never know precisely, as I'm constantly buying and selling, and frankly I neither know or care. I bought a house last week and am selling a house next week, but I don't know how many doors I have today, unless I effort a count.  Its either "enough" or "too many" depending on what's going on today.  But truthfully I don't know!


    Thinning the herd is amazing and should be done yearly just like you are doing. That is basically a masterclass in a response up there, great stuff. I have never once known or cared how many doors I have. I care about how much income I am generating from them and what their viability as long-term assets is. I don't mind low cash flow with high appreciation, but that's my specific plan, it doesn't work for everyone.

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  • Marcus Auerbach
    Investor 路 Milwaukee - Mequon, WI 路 Member since 2010 路 5k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y

    Your goals change. In the beginning, it's all about buying more deals with not much capital and frankly, maybe that's not the worst thing, because you learn a lot. Probably even more from the bad deals..

    Long term you are better off with better real estate. Financially, but also mentally. Fortunately, I was thinning my herd back in I think 2014 or so by getting rid of a few (experimental) investments in cheaper neighborhoods. They were not terrible, some people would call them C minus, and it wasn't even that much about financial considerations at the time (appreciation was not a thing back then in Milwaukee) but just not what I wanted to own or manage, so I sold them to them tenants - after quite a bit of financial coaching to get them to qualify for a loan.

    My standard advice is always to buy the best quality property you can afford. Cheap properties in Milwaukee are fools gold (especially for OOS investors, people literally will scoff at a rough listing and then someone will say: eh, someone from CA will buy it..) The problem is these homes are 60-120 years old and because of the low value neighborhoods, nobody has ever made any capital improvements beyond duct tape. You can kick the can down the road only so long, at some point capex exceeds cash flow.

    Also, stay away from weird properties. Don't buy a 2br/1ba without a basement and no garage on a corner lot next to the scrap yard, just because it's cheap and the seller is motivated. That will be you one day.

    Your future self will thank you (in 10 years).

    10Reply
  • Billy Smith
    Shawnee Mission, KS 路 Member since 2016 路 716 posts 路 313 votes
    1y

    The only thing I would say in a area that is cheap is flip it wash your hands of it ASAP .

    1Reply
  • Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
    OP
    Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @Marcus Auerbach:

    Your goals change. In the beginning, it's all about buying more deals with not much capital and frankly, maybe that's not the worst thing, because you learn a lot. Probably even more from the bad deals..

    Long term you are better off with better real estate. Financially, but also mentally. Fortunately, I was thinning my herd back in I think 2014 or so by getting rid of a few (experimental) investments in cheaper neighborhoods. They were not terrible, some people would call them C minus, and it wasn't even that much about financial considerations at the time (appreciation was not a thing back then in Milwaukee) but just not what I wanted to own or manage, so I sold them to them tenants - after quite a bit of financial coaching to get them to qualify for a loan.

    My standard advice is always to buy the best quality property you can afford. Cheap properties in Milwaukee are fools gold (especially for OOS investors, people literally will scoff at a rough listing and then someone will say: eh, someone from CA will buy it..) The problem is these homes are 60-120 years old and because of the low value neighborhoods, nobody has ever made any capital improvements beyond duct tape. You can kick the can down the road only so long, at some point capex exceeds cash flow.

    Also, stay away from weird properties. Don't buy a 2br/1ba without a basement and no garage on a corner lot next to the scrap yard, just because it's cheap and the seller is motivated. That will be you one day.

    Your future self will thank you (in 10 years).


    These are all great points. When the cash flow is too good to be true, it always is.

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  • James Hamling
    Real Estate Broker 路 Minneapolis, MN 路 Member since 2011 路 5k+ posts 路 6k+ votes
    1y

    @Jonathan Greene to piggy-back on what your laying down here: 

    I believe a core component of the "problem" is a gross over & mis use of "Cash-flow". 

    If everyone would simply eradicate that from there vocabulary and replace it with "Realized PERFORMANCE". Than maybe with adjusting the vocabulary to REALIZED performance and UNREALIZED performance, we can start correcting understandings. 

    There is realized gains & profits, and UN-realized gains and profits. As well as UN-realized expenses. And YES, far FAR too often I am seeing people stack up UN-realized expenses at a compounding rate, to give selves a false sense of "profit" on whatever monthly/quarterly capital there moving around. 

    Remove "Cash-flow" from the vocabulary. 

    Use Realized and Unrealized PERFORMANCE in place of such. 

    2Reply
  • Todd Knudson
    Real Estate Agent 路 Houston 路 Member since 2022 路 34 posts 路 19 votes
    1y

    @Jonathan, thank you for the post, I have to say 'Guilty as charged". Now with my admission all 10 property's are cash flowing. bottom performer only $78. per month. Your 5 step process was very helpful. Funny thing. the property i like the lease happens to be my best performing. Very interesting review. This now gives me a plan to follow.

    Thank you! 

    2Reply
  • Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
    OP
    Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @James Hamling:

    @Jonathan Greene to piggy-back on what your laying down here: 

    I believe a core component of the "problem" is a gross over & mis use of "Cash-flow". 

    If everyone would simply eradicate that from there vocabulary and replace it with "Realized PERFORMANCE". Than maybe with adjusting the vocabulary to REALIZED performance and UNREALIZED performance, we can start correcting understandings. 

    There is realized gains & profits, and UN-realized gains and profits. As well as UN-realized expenses. And YES, far FAR too often I am seeing people stack up UN-realized expenses at a compounding rate, to give selves a false sense of "profit" on whatever monthly/quarterly capital there moving around. 

    Remove "Cash-flow" from the vocabulary. 

    Use Realized and Unrealized PERFORMANCE in place of such. 


    Yes, this is great. Thanks for adding that. Cash flow is often a vanity metric that doesn't really mean actual cash flow.

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  • Jonathan GreeneBusiness Member
    OP
    Real Estate Consultant 路 Madison, NJ 路 Member since 2016 路 6k+ posts 路 7k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @Todd Knudson:

    @Jonathan, thank you for the post, I have to say 'Guilty as charged". Now with my admission all 10 property's are cash flowing. bottom performer only $78. per month. Your 5 step process was very helpful. Funny thing. the property i like the lease happens to be my best performing. Very interesting review. This now gives me a plan to follow.

    Thank you! 


    Yeah, that's why it's good to rank them in the order you like them also. There are numbers and then there is outside the numbers, but it helps to get them all down on a screen. Glad it helped!

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  • Rob K.
    Encinitas, CA 路 Member since 2011 路 191 posts 路 252 votes
    1y

    Sometimes looking at properties solely on the basis of current cash flow can be short sighted. Some of the properties I own were at one time not great cash flow properties. I have very rarely sold a property over the last 35 years and the income properties I hold now cash flow very well with not to much effort involved. Long term vision can trump current cash flow.

    So I will proudly take the label of property hoarder.

    4Reply
  • V.G JasonPro Member
    Investor 路 Member since 2022 路 3k+ posts 路 3k+ votes
    1y

    Just another quality over quantity post that we've been saying for some time now on here. Nothing new. 

    This time it's void of location premium not proximity, and that should absolutely be a deciding factor. 

    0Reply
  • Bud Gaffney
    Rental Property Investor 路 Boston, MA 路 Member since 2019 路 2k+ posts 路 1k+ votes
    1y

    YES !

    0Reply
  • JD MartinBusiness Member
    Moderator
    Rock Star Extraordinaire 路 Northeast, TN 路 Member since 2015 路 10k+ posts 路 16k+ votes
    1y

    Everyone that has more than 1 or 2 properties should have some kind of basic spreadsheet that demonstrates how much that property is bringing in after all your fixed costs are accounted for, at a minimum - PITI, lawn care, HOA fees, etc. And if all houses have not been fully rehabbed (we do fulls on every buy), some expected number for capital expenses should be included in that (IE if you have 3 years left on your roof you need to be deducting $X from that figure, repeat ad nauseum for all major capex). My spreadsheet also includes FMV of every property so I can monitor appreciation, year over year comparison of tax & insurance increases, current rent & last increase & last amount, etc. I don't number my properties (I don't own anything anymore I don't want to keep) but I do keep tabs on my net profit independent of income taxes on each unit because if a unit starts to slip I need to know if it can be salvaged (have I been consistent with rent increases? Are costs increasing faster than profits?) or if it needs to hit the block.

    So yeah, what you said more or less. I'm not a huge fan of constant buying and selling - it's just too much damned work at this point in life - but for sure I would jettison anything that wasn't making an acceptable profit, and if you have any RE you should know this number. Bragging about doors is just stroking the ego; I couldn't care less that a lot of people on here have more "doors" than me. I know that my *least profitable* "door" right now nets $518.51 every month (I just checked), and that's a number I'm satisfied with relative to the amount of work I'd have to do to improve it, and I'd hazard most people who are door collectors aren't making anywhere near that kind of money on probably their best units.  

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  • Joe S.Pro Member
    Investor 路 San Antonio 路 Member since 2020 路 3k+ posts 路 3k+ votes
    1y

    My two least desirable properties the appraiser appraised them out the roof so my refi cash out was really good. I would be doing good to sell them for what I owed on them at this point. I sure wouldn鈥檛 wanna pay to sell. The market would have to go up a bit more to sell them.

    I sold one out of the area Property recently and pretty well broke even, but I got my down payment back, so no hoarder there. The market was not as good as I originally had calculated in that area.馃

    I have a number of properties in Mississippi that I did a rehab on and then a refinance. Even if I didn鈥檛 want those properties at this point, I would not be benefiting anything to do all that work and then just get my money out. I suspect they will go up in value and I locked in the interest rates before it jumped up too much a few years back.

    About three years ago, I sold a couple of piggies as well. To the most part, I have nice houses in C to B plus areas. I have a handful of houses in A areas. 

    1Reply
  • Joe S.Pro Member
    Investor 路 San Antonio 路 Member since 2020 路 3k+ posts 路 3k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @Rob K.:

    Sometimes looking at properties solely on the basis of current cash flow can be short sighted. Some of the properties I own were at one time not great cash flow properties. I have very rarely sold a property over the last 35 years and the income properties I hold now cash flow very well with not to much effort involved. Long term vision can trump current cash flow.

    So I will proudly take the label of property hoarder.


     If they鈥檙e nice properties I鈥檓 sure you鈥檙e glad for everyone you kept. :-)

    Even a base hit can turn into a home run given enough time.

    1Reply
  • Todor Ialamov
    Real Estate Agent 路 Burlington MA 路 Member since 2018 路 113 posts 路 142 votes
    1y

    Could not agree more. I went to the BP conference in New Orleans a few years ago. Almost everyone I met, the first question they ask is "how many doors you own". People are so obsessed with the door count that they completely ignore what we are doing all this for.

    2Reply
  • Chris SeveneyBusiness Member
    Moderator
    Investor 路 VA 路 Member since 2015 路 21k+ posts 路 19k+ votes
    1y
    Quote from @Jonathan Greene:

    I have been seeing this a lot lately: people who hold on to underperforming properties because they add to their door count or to their self-worth as real estate investors. If you don't like buying hoarders' houses, don't be a property hoarder. A property hoarder keeps properties just to keep them. See the old mom-and-pop investors in their sixties that you are trying to buy off-market properties from.

    This is like people who buy for cash flow but don't realize that with the best cash flow comes capital expenditures and tenant issues. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Appreciation is great, but not when all of that appreciation is eaten by the repairs you aren't doing. It's ok to sell properties. It's ok to sell properties at a loss (you get the downpayment back to repurpose into something better).

    If you have four or more properties, this is what I would do (I just posted part of this as an answer to someone and thought it would make a good post):

    1. Rank them from best to worst in cash flow

    2. Rank them from best to worst in how much you like them

    *3. Rank them from best to worst in management cost

    *4. Rank them from closest to farthest in proximity

    5. Rank them from worst to best in capital expenditures expected

    *optional, not always necessary

    Add those numbers together for each property. The lowest number is your best property, and the highest number is your worst property. Sell your worst property first. Then, take that money and repurpose it into something better.

    Door culture is crazy. If you own ten doors and six aren't cash-flowing, why do you want to hold on to them if there isn't overwhelming appreciation coming? Don't be a property hoarder.

    Are you guys doing this or seeing this? Who wants to sell their worst-performing property and turn it into a better asset?


     Agree. The moment you get to a point where you are willing to let go of a property the better off you are. I have three right now that its time to get rid of as they do not fit our model nor do I want to take the time to continue to manage these (even with a PM). These are good cash flowing properties but for where I am at they are too much of a headache compared to the cost they bring in compared to my other assets. 

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  • John MorganPro Member
    Rental Property Investor 路 Grand Prairie, TX 路 Member since 2018 路 2k+ posts 路 2k+ votes
    1y

    I've only been investing in RE for 10 years and have 29 SFR. But from my limited time in the game, I've found that my complete lemons are cash cows a few years later as market rent comes up well and my cap ex fixes a few years ago have paid off. These old houses built 70-90 years ago seem to never break once I work out all the kinks. So I'm glad I didn't sell my 5-10 worst homes that seemed to have issues the first few years. They're now my best ones. So from my experience, I'm planning on keeping all the houses that I've had a lot of cap ex on. And maybe look into selling the ones that almost never break, because I know they are due to start falling apart. lol. But owning 29 houses seems to be an easy number to self manage so I think I'll hold off on buying anymore and keep it simple with what I have.

    2Reply
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