All Forum Posts by: Daniel O.

@Bjorn Ahlblad, thanks for the tips!

"WA LL assoc." is available at https://walandlord.org/, right?

One of these days I'll make it out to an event, and when the day comes I look forward to seeing you there :)

Hey folks,

I live in Seattle and therefore am not looking to buy any rental real estate locally. For that reason, I've mostly been doing my research in out-of-state areas like Pittsburgh or The Triangle in North Carolina.

Before I go all the way out of state, however, I wanted to see if there were any good investment opportunities in-state. I'm already doing this the hard way, painstakingly combing through city by city, town by town, looking at gross metrics and trying to dig in. That said, I figured that I might get some good feedback from all of you to save me some trouble or at least help me narrow down the field!

Any of you have any luck getting a good return consistently and with any potential for scale inside Washington State? Where in the state should I start looking? I'm looking for reasonable B+ to C neighborhoods, not warzones, not slumlording opportunities. I'm happy starting out with either SFR or MFR, but would appreciate a market where I can grow into MFR. I'm looking for an area that has solid industry that is not at risk of mass-obsolescence in the next decade. Ideally, I also find an area where tenant laws aren't insanely anti-landlord.

Eager to hear what you think. Thanks!

Sounds perfectly reasonable before taking action, but if you're looking for a property to analyze in depth, you have to hone in on some signal that an opportunity warrants deeper analysis, right? You can't put in that level of analysis on every listed (let alone off-market) opportunity, right?

You're obviously super far along the RE investing journey, but if you were just getting started, what signals would you latch on to that suggest a property is worth your time?

@Alex Deacon I appreciate the word of caution. Believe me, I understand that "rule of thumb != precise or usable analysis."

That said, my question was about the trend in expenses relative to number of units. It's possible that the answer to my question is "there is no trend," and that's fine.

Hey folks,

So I'm sitting here scanning through real estate listings in Pittsburgh and running quick-and-dirty analysis with the ol' 50% rule as a gauge for expenses. I look at $95,000 duplexes all the way to $1,000,000 6-plexes, and I start to notice that the money just doesn't seem to work out on the more expensive, larger properties, and that surprises me.

Then I realize: "oh right, the 50% rule is meant for single-family homes."

That brings me to my question: how do typical monthly expenses (not including loan payments) scale with number of units?

I would imagine that, as the number of units goes up, the overall percentage of gross income that goes to expenses would in turn go down, if only slightly.

What's your experience? Is there any decent guideline to for rough calculation of expenses with a larger multi-family? What are some conservative average expense percentages that you've observed with your own properties?

Thanks!

"QI" is "qualified intermediary"?

+1 for local meetup invite if it happens :)

You all are describing more or less my same situation.

@Kai Van Leuven developers developers developers developers developers.

I have no idea what people are doing in the city of Seattle w.r.t. rental property, but it feels like every house that isn't an owner residence is immediately bulldozed and replaced with a mcmansion.