Newbie First deal: bought 2 rentals in one day/3 in one month!

[Robert E Bogino]

Heres the short version for you who TLDR.

I never bought a house before. Bought 2 in one day, 3 in one month. Learned all I needed to know right here on BP. Used all the calculators here on BP to figure out the deals. Met my agent and property manager on BP.

Sounds like material for the next newbie podcast huh? @Brandon Turner , @Joshua Dorkin . Maybe the first ever agent/investor in same podcast show?? :) 

On to the journey. After about 2 months of research I decided to pull the trigger, and then fire off a couple more rounds.  I had never even bought a house before!  I am currently investing in buy and holds in the Rome GA market.  HUGE shout out to a pretty BA agent @Collin Doss for putting up with my million newbie questions and doing most of the foot work!I highly recommend him, this guy will put in the work!    Also great property management on their part.  And I met then right here on BP!  

I'll tell some of the funnier stories before the good ones (we all like those).  One property we went into I had the sinking feeling something was missing in this 2/1......Then I realized the tenants had no refrigerator or stove.  They did however have plenty of food laying about.  On this one Collin actually suggested if we get the place to go ahead and buy the tenants a stove and fridge.  He believed they were good tenants and it would show we actually cared about them and make them stick around.  Right there in my first interaction I realized their company did actually care about people as well as making profits for their investors. We got out bid on this house. He also later advised me against a duplex we looked at because he had a bad feeling about the tenants even though this property would have got him a nice commission. 

Another house was littered with heroin needles and obviously had squatters plus the obligatory cat pee pee smell.   The neighborhood looked like something out of season 1 True Detective, like i might be kidnapped and have a pentagram drawn on me any second. We got out of there pretty quick!

On to the purchases.  2 deals came up and Collin asked if I wanted to put in offers on both.  After I resisted the urge to puke for a few mins I said yes!  This was at 8:30 at night. We got counter offered by 9pm.  I'm thinking "who the hell sells houses at 9pm?"  Apparently every one. We went back and forth a few times and set closings for both on the same day.

Property 1- 3/2 SFR

$74,500 rents for $850 

Property 2- 3/1 SFR

$63,000 rents for $715

Property 3 (about 25 days later) 3/2 SFR

$55,900 currently rents for $700 with inherited tenants, plans to go up on rent when lease is up.

Here is a breakdown of all the numbers (credit to someone on BP for making this spread sheet, I don't remember who)

A definitely learned a lot about everything involved.  Getting repairs done on even "rehabbed turn key" type places, getting quality tenants in, financing etc. I'm no expert, but any other newbies feel free to hit me up with questions.  I'll be glad to try and help.

Special honorable mention to other BP members like  @Ali Boone for letting me bug the hell out of them with questions.

[Andre Lokasari]

I agree with @David Faulkner here:

"Agreed ... if Levin thinks that $200/mo ($700*28%) is too conservative for CapEx, Vacancy, and Upkeep then he is in for quite a surprise, as is the OP I suspect. When the roof goes bad, the roofer is not going to ask you first how much the place rents for before he gives you the roof bid, so why on Earth would you use that to estimate the expense?!? It makes 0% sense to do it that way."

Fortunately, he has pretty low annual tax for about 800 per year.

But, suppose you account all of the big items and average them out down to the per month accrual, I think $200 seems like a good number to have for capex. The thing with Capex is that if everything is newly rehabbed, you can build that reserve fund overtime at a slower pace. It is not like everything would break down all at the same time tomorrow (Well, hopefully not... unless there is an earthquake or something like that). But, if the assumption is that you buy and hold the property perpetually, even if the foundation is new, perhaps about 100 years from now, you will have to replace it. This is not very practical since you would not live that long anyway (well, some people do.... but I digress). so, capex is both art and science in my opinion and is a bit tricky to estimate.

It all depends on the condition of the big items: roof, foundation, windows, furnace, water heater, etc.

Also, the more properties you have, the more you can cross subsidize from the income of all of your different properties.  If one roof breaks down on one of your 5 properties, you can have the fund you set aside from all of your 5 properties to help fix that one roof that breaks down.  In a sense, once you have so many properties, your portfolio acts like a multi-family.  In a multifamily, the budgeting of the capex is slightly different because of this very same reason.  The capex cost is spread out through out all of the units.