Newbie Cashflow Question(s)

[David Montore]

Hi all, total newbie question here. Or maybe a couple, really. Or maybe I just need to ramble a little about a few things that confuse me as I make my way through these initial first stages of real estate self education. The pic below is a screenshot from a CAPEX Estimate spreadsheet that was posted to Rod Khleif's Facebook group during a discussion about property analysis. According to the poster this estimate list came from somewhere on BP and was intended for SFHs (although I keep reading that CAPEX doesn't apply to SFHs, so feel free to clear me up on that as well). Having seen Brandon use the BP calculator on webinars to guesstimate percentages for determining potential cash flow it seems like something like this, with very deliberately determined hard numbers, would be a safer bet, especially since it's pretty universal for SFHs regardless of which grade property we're talking. Does everybody here follow something like this when analyzing potential cash flow for SFHs? Do you tailor it to the property, putting aside money only for the things you know will need servicing and pocketing the rest? I have a bit of a contingency obsession where I can't see myself truly pocketing any cash flow until at least a few years into the life of a rental since I don't have mounds of cash sitting around in case "stuff" happens. In that regard, cash flow always seems to be a relative term to me. Like when I hear someone say "I'm cash flowing at $330/month on a $300k house", I can't help but think they'd better be socking that little bit away for a rainy day considering it isn't going to cover much even if you let it build up for a couple/few years. Thanks in advance for helping me wrap my head around this.