Costs on buying a residential investment property?

[Milena S.]

Hello everyone,

Let me just start out by saying I have a lot to learn!

I'm just starting out in real estate investing, and plan on buying my first property (duplex, triplex or fourplex) within a year, house hacking, and buying at least 1 property a year after that. 

Right now, I'm assessing every property that looks interesting to me on whatever online MLS I can find. So far, I'm using an excel sheet to calculate the potential cash flow. A lot of these expenses were inspired by the BP calculator and some podcasts, but I don't know how much I'm missing.

So far I have this for fixed expenses: 

• Property tax
• Flood insurance (if applicable) 
• Home insurance
• HOA fees
• Garbage
• Electricity
• Water and sewer
• Lawn maintenance 

And I have this for variable expenses:

• Vacancy rate (assuming 10%) 
• Repairs and maintenance (assuming 10%) 
• Capital expenditures

And this for initial costs:

• Purchase price
• Repair costs
• Purchase closing costs (assuming 3% of purchase price)

Is there anything else I need to consider in regards to expenses? And how should I approach calculating the costs on capital expenditures? 

Here is a picture of my excel sheet! Feel free to tell me if I need to add anything else to it. Also, if anyone thinks it might be useful to them, just PM me and I'll send you the excel sheet free of charge :) It has the calculations plugged in and everything. 

- Milena