​Is this a tolerable rental property?

[Kai G.]

I just became a first time landlord, and I'm wondering what you guys think (I posted most of this in new member intros, but at the speed the forum moves I think posts get only looked at by a few locals, so I hope it's okay to repost this here.)

The property is a 1br condo in NoVA (northern VA) that we bought since my wife was working down there, but she now found a job nearby (in NH). We didn't buy it with renting it out in mind, but since we've already got it, we're giving it a shot.

We bought it ~ a year ago for $179k, with a $120k 5/5 ARM currently at 2.75%. We just put $2500 and some sweat equity worth of upgrades / repairs into it, so it's in pretty good shape but kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanity are still outdated.

We now found what we believe to be a quality tenant on a 1 year lease at $1295/month. The expenses we know for sure are $283 HOA fee, $161 property tax, $14 insurance, $480 mortgage = $938 total.

That would be $357 cash flow, well, except I didn't account for vacancies, repairs/updates and property management, and if I do that, I end up at about zero. OTOH, the mortgage payment includes $200 principal, which isn't really a cost (though it still goes into cashflow).

Our plan for now is to manage the property remotely from NH -- we've lived in the unit ourselves for two years and didn't have any issues at all, and we just put in a new dishwasher and water heater, so we don't expect too much to happen, but well, I guess we'll see about that... This being a condo, the sizable condo fees should at least take care of bigger issues in the long run like roof / exterior, so we're mostly expecting the occasional appliance/AC problem only.

We're hoping to time turnover to be in the summer, where we can combine fixing things up and showing the place with a little vacation for ourselves, so we can actually get some benefit from the vacancy.

In summary, I think the numbers don't look great compared to what a real investment should bring -- part of the reason being that a relatively large amount of money is tied up in it -- but I think it looks like we should at least break even and I'm actually hoping to make some money off of it in the long run, and gain some experience to get into some real buy-and-hold investing.