Atlanta area rental newbie!

[Arthur Leao]

Hello everyone!  My name is Arthur.  I live and grew up in Georgia, specifically in the Greater Atlanta area. My wife and I purchased our first home, a modest studio, four years ago. We already had the plan in mind to rent it out when we were ready to upgrade as we realized that the rent would be almost double the mortgage payment.  We finally received the rental permit (25% limit) early February and went under contract on a single-family new build.  The house should be finished by the end of April and we are extremely excited to close on it then.

When trying to find information and guidance on renting out the condo, I stumbled upon the BP podcasts during my long commutes.  I bought and devoured Rich Dad Poor Dad, and now I'm hooked on the idea of achieving financial freedom through getting our "asset column" to match/surpass our "liability column."  We plan on keeping our current jobs as the foundation income until we build up enough passive income through rentals.  We are both rather shy, but realized we need to open up and get out there if we want to reach our dreams through this path.

I look forward to getting to know, learning from, and offering my own experiences as we go through this journey.

Cheers!

Arthur

[Craig H.]

Welcome to the world of real estate. Make sure you learn the finacial rules of sanity and don't jump into a bunch of mistakes. 

Many of the non professional landlords I know became so because they wanted to move out of one primary residence and into another, couldn't sell so they rented and proceeded to buy something new, and wuala they were real estate investors. 

I read rich dad poor dad in 03 or so and ran out and bought the first thing that seemed to make sense. 11 years and tens of thousands of dollars in losses later I finally unloaded it for a 20k out of pocket loss (wrote a check at closing) and was glad to see it go. 

In 09 I started again and made even bigger mistakes a few times before finally getting into a rhythm of doing things "right" and built a portfolio of 28 units. I STILL didn't do things completely right and through some recent analysis I discovered there are a hand full of properties that need to go. They just don't cash flow. 

Know what you can get in rent. Know what your expenses will be (assume 50% of rent), then be able to make your payment plus some from what's left. 

All that being said, there are a dozen different strategies so figure yours out. There are different strategies in different areas for different property types. If your condo is in the middle of buckhead and you know with near certainty that it will be worth 5x as much when the mortgage is paid off you might tollerate break even cash flow. And for someone who wants to move you might even tollerate out of pocket repairs over time so that you were able to move. Just know that what you are doing is what you wanted to do. Haha.

Craig