Newbie thinking about buying first buy and hold

[Caleb Krites]

Hi everyone. I've been looking at properties and doing research for the past 6 months and I finally feel like I'm ready to pull the trigger. I'm in the Columbus, OH market and found a property that seems like a good opportunity, but would like to get some feedback from experienced investors to make sure I am looking at this properly and not missing anything.

The house is in what I would consider a C/C- neighborhood in the downtown Columbus area, but it butts up to an up-and-coming area. It is currently rented and section 8 approved. It's a 4 bed, 1.5 bath, 1,900 sq ft single family home. I plugged all of the numbers into the rental calculator and this is what I came up with:

Loan: purchase price of $49k, 25% down on 15yr mortgage at 3.31%

Est. repairs: $10k (not sure how to estimate without doing a walk through, but it is currently rented so I didn't think it could be too bad)

Total cash needed: $22,750

ARV: $105K (used Zillow, estimate was $117k and all homes in neighborhood were estimated at $100+)

Monthly rent: $900 (used rentometer and looked on Craigslist to see what was currently available)

Total monthly expenses: $657.80 (P&I $259.30, Cap Ex $90 (10%), repairs $90 (10%), management $90 (10%), vacancy $72 (8%) and property taxes $56.50 (6%)

Cash flow: $242.20

Cash on cash ROI: 12.78%

Would love to hear some feedback on if you think this would be a good deal and if I'm looking at this properly or missing anything.

Thanks!

[Andrew Johnson]

Caleb Krites Combining newbie + C- area + "not sure how to estimate repairs" is a bad formula for success. You can rent out a property with a roof that's about to fail. You can rent a property with galvanized plumbing. You can rent a property (in the spring) with a barely serviceable HVAC unit. In short, you could have repairs of $50K as easily as $10K. Maybe that's being over dramatic but you get the point. Bump your "total cash needed" by $10K, $20K, etc. to stress-test what happens if you go over your estimate. Then beg (or pay) a contractor to walk the property with you.

The pesky emotion of "wanting" to do a deal can make you see a D neighborhood as a C-. It can make you think that the roof is okay. It doesn't take too many small, small, small errors in optimism to crush a deal in the real world.