Recommended amount to set aside per unit for mx/repairs?

[Shannon Brill]

Anyone have recommendations for a simple calculation/percentage on how much money to have on reserve per unit for basic maintenance and repairs?  Thanks in advance!

[John Teachout]

Maintenance is somewhat of a moving target and hard to "predict" other than that there will be some and it will be intermittent. I usually allow about 5% of the rent to go for that category. The most important thing is to have reserves that can be used for capex, maintenance or other unplanned expenses. If there's funds set aside for contingencies then these won't create a crisis when they occur. We have line items for set asides for each of our properties but don't keep them separate after that. ie, we have a savings account for capex, another for maintenance and so forth but not a separate account for each property.