New Investor Intro & A Question for Locals

[Seth Holland]

Hello BiggerPockets & Hello fellow Memphis Investors

My name is Seth Holland. My wife and I are about to start investing in real estate! We've been watching videos and webinars, reading books and articles, and listening to podcasts for about a year now and we are so excited to finally get started on our first deal.

So here's my first question to the experts: We've analyzed a lot of properties using the BP calculators. We're currently looking at houses in the suburbs of Memphis (Bartlett, Cordova, Germantown, Collierville). We're having trouble with using realistic numbers on our vacancy %, repair %, capex %, and management %. Can anyone shed some light on what ranges their getting for these? If I go too high on these the numbers don't work out on the houses, but I don't want to get into a bad deal if I'm being too optimistic. Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Elizabeth Wilson]

@Seth Holland - Got it!  @James Wachob also hosts a network event at his business every month.  Check out the event page on BP for details.

Are you looking at properties currently on the MLS or off-market?

@Caleb Heimsoth posted a similar question in the Memphis forum that you might want to follow: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/752/topics/42...

I look forward to see what the other locals choose for their numbers.  We only have one rental so far and I don't think our numbers are usual so I'd hate to advise.  From the little I've heard from other investors, those numbers don't seem to high but a lot of that depends on condition of home and neighborhood.