50% and 2% rule.... And my Multi family purchase with Carriagehouse.

[Logan Zanki]

Hello everyone my name is Logan, I'm new to biggerpockets.com and i'm located in central New Jersey, my goal is to get out of the rate race by purchasing multifamily properties. Little background about me, I have 8 years experience of doing residential mortgages and small commercial loans.

My plan was to purchase the property using FHA as I did then in two years use the VA loan to purchase my primary property because I'm a veteran. During the time between now and in two years, I would like to joint venture or just purchase small homes on my own.

So here's my first step:

I recently purchased a 4 family house in Central New Jersey with two 1 bedrooms and two 2 bedrooms. The purchase price was 365,000, taxes are 9700, insurance is 1080. Because I did an FHA mortgage my total mortgage payment is $3200 including the FHA mortgage insurance.

Rents:

1 bedroom unit $900

1 bedroom unit $600 (his lease is up in 6 months, I'll increase it to $700 because he's been here for 22 years)

2 bedroom unit $825 (their lease is up next month, ill increase it to $1,200 because that's the going rate and I wouldn't mind different renters).

2 bedroom unit $900 ( me and my wife moved into this unit, the unit could easily be rented for $1,500 but were leaving in it)

Other expenses are trash which is $40 month for all the units in total. The renters pay for all their own utilities.

Repairs needed:

- new paint job on the outside - 12,000

- new flooring in our unit - $5,000 (all of the other units have new flooring)

The lot is half acre and has a Carriagehouse in the back which is 2,000 square feet. The house needs about $40,000 in repairs and then I should be able to rent it out for 1,800.

At the end of the day my total out of pocket was around $9,000 because I had the seller role the closing cost into the loan and did a seller concession for repairs.

Was this a good purchase, am I heading in the right direction? Because if I'm understand the 50% and 2% rule, then I'm doing thing the wrong way.

Also after I finish the paint job and floors should I focus on my next purchase or should I focus on restoring the carriage house first? I ask that question because values are low now and I only have a small window, the carraige house I already have.