All Forum Posts by: Nathan Hedrick

BP has an "On The Market" podcast. https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

The best way to keep track of the market is to look at real deals constantly in your selected market.

@Nathan Hedrick

Follow John burns and calculated risk

@Nathan Hedrick You need to find an investor friendly agent in your market to work with. They will pull comps for you and run ARV, rental estimates- when that's time. Zillow estimates in my market are never accurate. Especially if the property needs updating. Find someone on BP that you can work with when you're ready. They will guide you through your markets idiosyncrasies.

If you are within 20% on all of these, it shouldn't make or break the deal. This is how I would handle each of these:

Insurance: I would use Zillow's number for stage one and then you can confirm with an insurance agent once you are under contract in due diligence. 

Water: You can ask what the owners water bills have been like. If it is a single family home, your tenant should pay this.

Garbage: If you are going private, you should be able to call a company and ask what they recommend for a four plex and ask what that costs. If it is a single family home, your tenant should pay this. 

Electric and gas: I would not buy a property that's electric was not separately metered, so this should be 0 outside of vacancy loss or common areas where it will be low. 

HOA Fees: This should be listed in the listing. If looking off market, l

Lawn/ Snow: I would call a local landscaping company and ask what they charge. I personally try to minimize grass areas(this helps with water too). 

You want to pass utilities on to tenants as much as possible. Sometimes that's not possible in multi-families that lack separate meters, but for simplicity, let's say you're analyzing single families. Then as the landlord you might only pay insurance, garbage, HOA fees and lawn/snow. You would pass water, electric and gas on to the tenants so you can exclude those from your analysis.

For insurance, call an agent in your area to get an estimate or use one of the numerous online comparison shopping sites (you can get a quote without owning the property). For garbage and lawn/snow, make some calls to get quotes for your area. All of these costs won't vary significantly enough by property to affect your analysis at this stage so for ballpark purposes you don't have to do it over again for each property.

HOA fees will vary from property to property and there's no way to know without asking. Sometimes the number will be mentioned in the MLS listing. You could try to find listings that include that information to (again) get a sense of what is typical in your area and use a conservative range estimate on properties where you don't know.

@Nathan Hedrick all is pretty local. THe BP calculator has some rough numbers, but find someone in your area that owns some properties and ask them what stuff cost. 

Find a mom and pop rental and see if you can help them out by showing places or something and now you have an investor that will answer some questions in the area you care about.