Investing in my region - Buy-and-Holds outside your area?

[Brandon Schlichter]

Hi there, I've been working on/toward investment properties for a year now.

I currently manage (And my name is on the mortgages too) 2 properties consisting of a SFH and a 6 unit apartment. Both have done OK with the SFH doing very well and the 6 unit apartment doing average.

I'm now spending quite a bit of time on the 6 unit apartment, doing repairs, collecting rent, answering phone calls from the tennants. The SFHS has been pretty much maintenance free over the past year, although we're having to get a new tennant there right now.

the SFH was purchased as a cashout refi deal , $46k purchase, $3k in repairs , with a re-appraisal at 70k , we did a cashout refi for the purchase of the apartment complex and made the complete down payment with it. Our total payments are something like $600/mo with $100 in cashflow from the property which has worked out very well overall.

I'm starting to find a problem of locating good properties in my town, I live in a county of 52k population ,and NO management companies what so ever. If I go to metro areas, I have easy access to property managers.

My hope/goal is to be able to locate properties in these metro areas (And I've had no problem so far) and find them with ARVs of 10%-25% , purchase , repair , debt load and then lease.

Most of the properties i've run into in these metro areas run these numbers :

Purchase price of $12,500
Repair costs of no more than $7,500
Total market value after repairs - $60,000
Potential market (Non subsidised) rents of $650/mo.
Taxes/ins of $100/mo estimated

If I don't debt load the properties, i'm looking at a simple cashflow with no vacancies, or outside expenses of $230/mo with a cashflow of $420 a month. I know this is high because expenses aren't included , and the expenses may very well run me $200/mo after everything is accounted for.

I'm looking to debt load the first few properties enough so that I can buy more (If I can find deals like these, I want ALOT).

If I debt load them @ a 75% LTV i'll end up with approximately $25k in cash, which is enough to buy more of them. Once they're debt loaded, the simple income is $250/property, assuming a $200/mo expense i'll cashflow $50/mo , I'll be willing to even pay for these to get access to the equity.

Does this seem reasonable?