Rooting through the zoning can be cumbersome, but the ADU can tun a non income producing property into a great asset (I have one at my house and it cuts my mortgage costs in half!).

So you rooting for airBNB or the government (or shall we say governments)?

My instinct is that this may be the true root of the issue you are trying to solve.People don't normally go into RE sales seeking to get paid by the hour ... there are plenty of other jobs that can do that.

Use that to help.This community is full of people happy to root for your success, especially when they can see that you are actively contributing to it.Best of luck to you.Bram

Roof costs say $8000 (depending on size, shape, type of shingles, etc.) and last 25 years (depending on weather, type of shingles, slope, etc.) ... that's $27/mo you need to put away in CapEx to eventually replace the roof ... now do that for all the systems in the property, add them all up, add some reasonable amount of margin, and you have a reasonable grass roots estimate of what your CapEx should be ... code it into excel with the approriate parameters such as square footage, number of water heaters, etc. and you can knock out a CapEx estimate for a specific property in a matter of minutes, without messing around with bogus rules of thumb like 50% rule or 10% of gross rent, or any other such thing that tries to relate things that are completely unrelated in order to shortcut around actual thought and analysis.Any calculator that you do not understand all of the inputs, outputs and assumptions that went into them are less than useless, and BPs are no exception ... therefore the best ones will be the ones you build yourself from the ground up and modify over time as you gain experience and find that some of your assumptions, inputs, and formulas need tweaking.  

. $1,200 per year to put into reserve.If a roof is around $8,000, $100 per month reserve would take 6.67 years to accumulate.But, assuming full replacement, you still have $1,200 to $1,700 for a water heater, $6,000-$7,000 for a boiler or HVAC, $10,000-$15,000 to replace an outdated kitchen, $7,000-$9,000 for a bathroom.If you're holding that property for 20-30 years, you'll end up replacing something no matter how new the property might be when you put it into service.Now you are starting to get closer IMO on the real way to calculate CapEx ... roof is $8000 and lasts 25 years ... that is $27/mo ... water heater is $1200 and lasts 10 years ... that is $10/mo ... anualize all of the CapEx items that will need to be replaced over time and add them up, and whalla, you have a good grass roots estimate of CapEx expense.

Tree roots busted the sewer main, needed emergency replacement on a Sunday, we got pretty screwed calling a retail plumber while we were out of town...

The entire reason we are having this conversation is because of the appreciation ... there would be no conversation to be had if it were he bought a property in Ohio for $50k and today it is worth about $50k :)It is not electrical engineering, we are not dealing in imaginary numbers, like the square root of negative one ... the profits he has are real, if he sells or cash out refinances them then they spend just the same as cash flow or any other profits ... if he goes through the drive through and orders a hamburger, they don't say "Wait a second, did this money come from appreciation?

It's always especially difficult to watch if you've had roots there for a while.

I'm rooting for you!