Quest for early retirement

[Bruce C.]

Well, after seeing all of Sammy B’s post, i thought I’d start my own to keep track of how I’m doing. My goal is to retire by 50. I’ll be turning 36 soon. If I can average at least $300 a month per door, then I figure I need 3 doors a year. I’m assuming I can figure out how to pay for health insurance on that, but that’s another topic.

My first house was a duplex in Galveston. Currently renting to tenants that came with it at 2173 total per month, about 1700 a month in expenses. Somehow, the bottom tenants are using $600 a month in electricity cooling an 880 sqft home (bottom floor). I detailed some of it in another post. Fortunately, I have a happy update on that property - Galveston housing Authority agreed to have utilities switched to tenants AND they suggested increasing rent to 1400 for the downstairs. So I’ll be getting g 2250 total and dropping a 700 a month th expense (water too).

I’ve been looking for the next property, and probably made about 7-10 offers. I even went and bid at the Harris county tax auction. Well, this past weekend my realtor called and said someone be knows at a bank is going to list a bank owned 996 sqft 1/1 in Galveston and we can have first look at it, and they’d probably accept 85-90k. It also had 4800 taxes we’d have to pay.

We went to look at it Tuesday night, and at that price, I was expecting some serious work needed. Turns out it was an Airbnb rental that was already staged for the next guest and in very good shape. It even recently had central ac installed! Power still on.

It was 2-1 long ago, and were going to add a wall with a door to put that room back. We're using Jet Lending for 3 months, and we expect the ARV to be 140k after about 9k worth of work - paint the porch, pressure wash siding, new laminate in bathroom in addition to wall.

Under contract as of today, hoping to close Friday, that will probably slip to the following Tuesday or Wednesday realistically though. They accepted our first offer of 85, and that makes me wish we’d started at 79, oh well.

Should rent 1200-1350, however, being that it is already furnished except for the extra bedroom we’re adding, we’re going to give short term rental a try. Airbnb estimates we should earn 2250 a month with a 50% occupancy rate. We’ll try it through the peak summer time, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll rent it long term (or sell it). I like this one because it seems to have a low margin for catastrophic screw ups

Anyway, sorry for the long car, and thanks for reading

Edit: none of the formatting in the app took. 

Home 2, door 3 of 45, i clearly need to hire a professional for pictures when i list it

[Nathan Gesner]

Looks like a nice unit. When considering vacation rentals, don't forget to add in all the additional expenses. Let's assume you are correct and can make $2,250 a month.

I think Galveston charges 9% tax and AirBnB will charge 4% so that's $292.50 in fees.

You have utilities, TV, and internet. I expect those will average $300 or more. You'll have to maintain the lawn which can cost another $200 a month but let's assume there's only six months of lawn care so you can average that out to $100 a month.

Just those charges alone ate up $700 a month so your income just dropped to $1,500. That's $150 - $300 more than you would get with a long-term rental but...you haven't counted the cost of your time. You have to answer inquiries, process reservations, get guests checked in/out, handle maintenance calls, inspect and clean after every stay, replace consumables, etc.

Again, I don't know the actual numbers but it doesn't take much to bring that income down to the same level you would get with a long-term rental and the long-term rental requires a lot less work on your part. Something to think about.