Nervous First Rental

[Duncan Van Horn]

So my wife and I are buying our first rental. We live in Oregon and the real estate prices are so high that we would need an extremely large downpayment in order to get our payments down to the point of making 2X our payment in rent. Thus we elected to buy a home in Omaha, NE. My aunt is a realtor there and directed us away from certain neighborhoods and was very happy to find us a small house in between the University and the Hospital. My uncle also does home inspections.

Some basics:

Me: 65k per year, 70k in brokerage, 25k in Roth

My wife: 35k per year, 10k in brokerage, 20k in Roth

We own two bare land properties, both worth about 100k each here in Oregon. One is paid off and one we still owe 20k on. We bought one with owner financing and the other we paid cash.

We have no debt other than the land payment, no car payment, student loans, etc...

The house: We have an offer accepted at 156,000 for a 2 Bedroom 1 Bath. Nice little house, renovated bathroom, one car garage, needs small things done like new paint on trim and basement, some carpentry work on back porch/steps, new gas range/oven. Comps in the area renting for about 1400. Monthly payment will be slightly below 750.

I have done quite a bit of research and felt good about the idea, but now I'm so nervous. Due to this we're moving into a house that runs for 1,000 a month in January, down from 1,600 right now. I'm also thinking about selling the property that we still owe on in order to have more of a cushion. We could also use that money next year for another down payment on another property if all goes well.

My fear definitely arose from watching my parents divorce right before the recession, go bankrupt, and one year later my father was driving a school bus and my mom was living in a friend's spare room. I have been quite careful with finances for my entire adult life. Our credit is very good.

Can someone either tell me everything will be okay? is there something I'm missing that I should consider? I have more questions that I'll post elsewhere, but for now I just need to hear from other people that were nervous when they started their real estate journey.

Thanks for any input.

[JD Martin]

It sounds like you have virtually nothing to worry about. You just made the mortgage payment by downsizing your personal home from $1600 to $1000, which is quite an accomplishment since most people are willing to give up nothing in order to make investing work. You just created the mortgage payment in space by moving. Even if no one rented your house at all, you're no worse off than before financially speaking and now have an investment property to show for it instead of a bigger rent payment (I assume you were renting?). 

Once the property is rented, assuming you do a good job screening applicants, you will do virtually nothing besides collect rent. I have an entire portfolio of houses and on most of them I spend less than an hour per month managing them. Biggest time suck is when a place goes vacant, which requires turnover efforts (cleaning, touch up paint, etc), advertising, screening and on-boarding new tenants. Beyond that, it's pretty low key. Make sure your major systems are up to par (HVAC, roof, appliances, water heater) and enjoy your newfound wealth. 

I know it's scary. When I bought my first property, which I paid for in cash, I still have a bucket of nerves and "what-ifs". It all turned out to be nothing; I had the house rented before we even finished the rehab.