All Forum Posts by: Justin S.

What does everyone use as a guide for monthly repair budgets when calculating when to buy a property? Obviously we all do our best to make sure the properties we buy will not have any catastrophic repairs, but as far as normal maintenance/repair while the unit is occupied, it'd be nice to be able to plug an average number in. On my multi-family units, I usually use 12 - 15% of rents, because these properties usually require a lot more repairs than SFH. For my SFHs, I use anywhere from 5 - 8%. Thoughts?

Thanks Brandon Turner. Your blog is one of the reasons I joined this site. This business can be a headache, but building it up to work for me was the goal from day one.

Price will depend on if it needs to be primed, or if it's ready to be painted. I would say no more than $100 - $125. Your best bet is to find a local painter that you can contact for all sizes of jobs. Instead of using a contractor, who is going to take a cut for being the general on the job site.

Hey everybody, just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Justin, I live in Iowa and I've recently been getting pretty deep into real estate. I am currently up to six single family properties, and two 4plexes. My strategy has been to purchase foreclosures, or properties that need some work. I do all of the construction stuff myself, hire out things that I can not do, and then pay a management company to manage the tenants. It's nice because I have the peace of mind to not get calls at all hours, but it obviously hurts my income as well. I try and get $175 - $225/month for the single family properties, and I cash flow about $400/mo for each of the 4plexes. These numbers figure in a healthy repair budget. I look forward to corresponding with like-minded people.