How to determine if my portfolio overleveraged?

How to determine if my portfolio overleveraged?

Rental Property Investor · NY · Member since 2018 · 126 posts · 42 votes

I understand the concept of being overleveraged with-in an individual property.  My question is about if my portfolio is overlevereged?  Generally speaking my plan is to buy properties that are under the market value and must cash flow at least $200 per month.  I'm about to close on my first rental property. I am planning on Brrring  and then to rinse and repeat and rent out the properties for several years.  

How much debt  can I can on before I'm overleveraged (lets assume that I don't lose sleep at night over this and try to make this about the numbers)?  How much cash reserve should I have?   Should I have enough for 6 months? One year? Two Years?  Should this number grow as the number of properties I have?

I am trying to base this information on a crash in the late 2000's.  If something like this happened, how do I predict my vacancy percentage?   Do I assume it goes to 60%?  50% 20%?  

By knowing the worst case scenario for this information I can better determine if I'm taking on too much risk and can adequately take on cash reserves and plan for the worse.

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  • Investor · Chicago, IL · Member since 2009 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    7y

    When you work with banks, they generally write loans that have a proper debt coverage ratio.   Landlords get in trouble when their properties fail to perform, they lack proper reserves or they get into too many deals and a bad one takes them down.

    For those who are worried about the next real estate crash - if you are a long term landlord, you will have more of a chance of surviving it.  

  • Rental Property Investor · NY · Member since 2018 · 126 posts · 42 votes
    7y

    @Brian Ploszay Thanks for getting back to me. That is correct about banks. But banks will only lend up to 20 properties, what if I'm trying to scale to 100 SFH and am using private money?

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