The "rule" as it has been defined and described throughout BP is that 50% of your income will be eaten by expenses, the remainder is what you get to keep to pay off any debt service or as profit.The 50% rule includes property management, so if you self-manage then that translates to about 40%, not 50.If you bring in $1000/month on a single family home you should expect that over the long haul (10+ years) you're going to average about $400/month on expenses ($500 if paying property manager).Keep in mind this is a general rule of thumb.

@Michael Morgan Hands-off, hassle-free REI usually translates to buying higher end properties, and then paying to have them managed.

I don't know how or if that will translate to a marketing campaign focused on motivated sellers, but we'll see!!

I haven't yet seen anyone translate 'cash flow' in this manor, so if someone feels I'm misleading, please correct + explain.

Is this nightmare translated to the property investor as well?

So if I were to recruit you to Keller Williams and you sell a house and earn a commission and your office makes a profit that month, I would get a profit sharing check based on that sale from that office, but does not affect your commission in any way - it's hard to explain.That disclosure out of the way - in Kansas City, for any new agent traditional or investor, I would spend at least a year, probably two in a Keller Williams office.1) They have the best training for agents in Kansas City2) They have the best training to teach you how to run a business and market that business - that translates very well to the investor.3) They don't have board duty or quotes, many of the big companies do.I think every new agent should learn how to do their job correctly, whether they intend to be a traditional agent or not, and KW will teach you that and they also teach how to run your business like a business, very helpful for a new investor.If I were picking offices I would go with the one closest to your home or your day job so you can make their training classes.Once you are experienced, I would say stay with KW for at least 3 years so you can become vested (It was 3 years when I was there and I was there for about 6 years), so you to can bring in new agents and earn profit sharing.They also have an amazing back office and tools to run your realtor business, that again works for the investor too.If you already know what you are doing, then I would probably be looking at Chartwell, Platinum or Kansas City Regional Homes for 100% commission offices.Reece and Nichols usually does not want you unless you are a traditional agent and meeting their quotas.

Austin, like Dallas has a booming economy with great job and population growth, however, that doesn't necessarily translate to a good market for rentals.

And I know some real estate gurus can be kinda phony and cheesy but this guy was genuine.Getting to my point, he has a apprenticeship program which you can apply to join, and it's basically a mentor following you step by step to make sure your doing all your translations correctly.

Some people find that skill they have in other fields translate very well to certain types of real estate investing in ways they hadn't thought of.Tim

I don't know if this will work, but here goes, I've got a few sentences that I need to translate into spanish.