our first rental property

[Brandon Gillis]

good afternoon! i am a fellow real estate rookie and have been interested for a very long time. My wife and I are in the process of buying another home, and we are going to rent out our current house we have now. Based off the comps from the realtor, we can get about 2k a month. Mortgage is 1550. so it will definitely cash flow, even if we need to lower the rent to be competitive to get it leased. My question is, being that it will be our first rental property should we hire a property management company or try to self manage for now? end goal will be to have multiple properties, so we will likely have one at that point. but we're conflicted because we feel like we could handle it. 

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Brandon Gillis:

Rent is $2,000

Your mortgage is $1550, PM is $200, and maintenance will cost $200.

Assuming your mortgage includes taxes and insurance, you are still at $1950 a month in expenses, leaving only $50 cashflow.

$50 a month for three years will give you $1,500 for reserves. But one month of vacancy will cost you $2,000 plus utilities! What if you get a tenant that fails to pay rent for one month, leaves $2,000 in cleaning and repairs, and it takes you another month to find a replacement renter? That's $6,000 in losses (minimum) which will take you ten years at $50 cashflow to recover.

I recommend you learn how to calculate cashflow so that you stay out of trouble:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...