All Forum Posts by: Brandon Elliott-Pandey

I was at a meetup the other day, and we were discussing the question, "How much should I keep in reserves for each rental property?". So I figured I would post it to hear everyones feedback

My quick and simple answer is 6 months of PITI (Principal, Interest, Taxes, and Insurance) or $10,000 in reserves for each rental property. Which ever is greater. K.I.S.S.

To date, I still still use this metric. For context I have 3 rentals. Are there times when I dip under that thresh-hold? Yes!

However, there is a tipping point at which this rule of thumb no longer applies. For instance, if you have ten rental properties and $10,000 in reserves for each property, that amounts to $100,000 sitting idle in a checking or savings account. For me personally, that is too much and I would rather redeploy some of that money into other investments. How much money is too much depends on the individual.

Question for the BP community? How much do you keep in reserves for each rental property?

@Brandon Elliott They did have an app. I’m on it. They just don’t have it in the stores anymore or support for it any longer.

@Brandon Elliott-Pandey

I think it really depends on what how involved you want to be and what your long term goals are. If you are limited on capital, and want to scale quickly, maybe an STR house hack is the way to go. Putting as little money down as possible and squeezing everything you can out of the property but knowing you're going to need to put in hard work to do so.

Also, we do a mixture of STRs, MTRs, and LTRs, and I will say we are happy to run any strategy as long as it makes sense for that property.  Meaning, you need to look at your property and see which category of these 3 would best suit that property, how much work you want to put in managing it, and what are your expected financial results.

When I first chat with my clients about what strategy they are looking to do, I always ask about their long term goals in RE, and where they want to be financially in a year, 5 years, etc.  I also ask where they fall on the "comfortability vs profitability scale".  Typically, the less comfortable you are, the more profitable you are.

Everyone's situation is going to be different.

Great question!

here’s a picture of the BP app layout. 

And a picture of the app’s icon…

@Chris B. There is, or more accurately was, and android app. I'm writing this post in it now. The last thing I had read said they had pulled it from the app stores for a redesign, but that has been a while ago.

@Brandon Elliott I’m not upgrading my 6 yr old phone to avoid losing my BP app access.

@Brandon Elliott

I confused... I go on BP via the phone version about 98% of the time. I have a Samsung Galaxy 7.

Am I missing something?

Are you asking if they created a new app or come up with future specific apps for phones?

Ps. My BP access…

97% iPad safari browser

2% pc explorer browser

1% the app.

It’s just not. Good as the website. 

Why specifically do you want an app versus just using the website?

We had an app. It didn’t see much traffic and got middling reviews. Maintaining two mobile apps costs much more than maintaining one website.

Keep asking LOUDLY, and get more people to sign up for Pro, promise us that you’ll leave us good (honest) review, and we will probably do it again.