You're expecting $1500 a month in rent and you should allocate 8-10% for Vacancy, 8-10% for Management, 10% - 15% for repairs and CapEx, plus your HOA $317, utilities and taxes.

.  ($1K / 12.5 years)$2K rent (2 BR, 1Ba in fairly high rent area typical of many coastal So Cal rentals) at 5% is a $100/month allocation. 

If you have $130k into it and sell for $190k that’s a $60k delta which looks pretty good but you still have to allocate for costs of sale (~$13,300), cap gains tax (~$12,000-24,000 depending on your tax bracket and whether it’s short term or not), holding costs during the listing time period and during the sale, etc. all ads up to maybe $20-30k in your pocket, maybe even less.

Furthermore, upon receiving updated proposals from both contractors, I was able to identify how much funds were being allocated to labor/materials/admin.

I allocate my cap ex/maintenance estimates evenly distributed even though we know in practice all major items should last at least 10 years.

High Maintenance Tenants, High Insurance Premiums and High time allocation !  

This way you'll know where the money will be going and more importantly how much money needs to be allocated to your new purchase.I hope this helps.

Basically run things through a property calculator to see if a property will cash flow after all the appropriate allocations have been made.

Hi Blake,I'll give you tip.Here in Texas, sub-metering (and Allocated Utility Service) is regulated (in a decent fair way) by Texas Law (Texas Public Utilities Commission).The type of meters, the amount of late charges, the amount you can mark the bill up to recover the cost of sub-metering, what the lease must say, etc...You might want to check the State, Parish and city laws and see if it's regulated, and then come up with a strategy for it.Maybe ask the State Landlord Association about it, if you have one.Good Luck!

I like to narrow it down; what someone is looking to allocate for their next project, what areas they are currently searching in, how do they calculate their budget/costs and what returns would they like to see.