Are you reserving for cap ex, maintenance & vacancy?

Long term rental numbers are hard to get cash flow with added in reserves for maintenance, cap ex, and vacancy.

It’s unnecessary and potentially problematic to add the ex-partner to the title before the sale.

However I like to run my numbers conservatively and account for cap ex, vacancy, maintenance reserves 10/5-7/5-7% respectively.

Most if not all of these properties require SIGNIFICANT cap ex rehabs and conventional financing won't touch them; you'd likely need to go the hard money route at 10-12%, 2 points, 12-18mon turn around.

Aim for $500/mo min and even that won't allow you to tap into unless that's after cap ex, management, vacancy is factored in.

I've been trying to save up for what could potentially go wrong like cap ex things.

Figure out a question set that helps dive into their expertise as investor-friendly agents, ask about their experience in the investment real estate space, and have them send you a few properties that could meet your goals to show that they can provide quality properties for your to analyze (hint: this is also good to see if they overpromised on their market [ex - Raleigh for cash flow]).Also with the new lawsuit, any agent that knows what they're doing will require you to sign an agency agreement prior to viewing a home.

However what happens when the tenant vacates and now the unit has to be turned over/takes a few months to find a new tenant and during that same period of time the sewer line goes and you get hit with that $15,000 cap ex expense in addition to the vacancy and turn over costs.

I'm assuming you are arriving at your cash flow number by applying Gross income - cap ex, maintenance, utilities, vacancy, tax, insurance, mgt, landscape/snow & Debt service?