I personally use 20% for the type of houses you describe above.In addition, while maintenance costs usually cover routine items, you should probably consider accounting for capital expenditures as well i.e.

You can also set up key word alerts to keep up on items of interest.

Without itemizing every line item I'm about $117k-118k into the house right now.

(I am doing most of it myself against good advice, but I am improving) It sometimes takes a long time for something to truly sink in, so I like to reread items.

Although you may not want to deal with tenants or the other various items that go along with rental properties.

So - while we account for the various items allowed for in the 50% rule, we just do the math on each property we are at all serious about.One issue I have with that particular rule of thumb is that we do conventional 80/20 financing with 15 year amortization.

That 50% thingy is a lot closer to reality than the $ 16,000 Net.Each unit vacant for one month, is half of your total expenses, without fix up, repair, taxes, insurance, reserves for major items, etc., etc., etc.

I am sure someone with more experience can provide more info, but here is a start.The information I kept was: - original signed application & lease (tenant received copy) - signed completed move-in checklist - records of exact date and payment amount from each tenant - signed complete move-out checklistI kept all this information for several years after the tenant left to property.Having learned more since that time, I would also keep - records of all maintenance requests from tenants - records of exact date and payment for all maintenance items

Make a detailed list of everything that needs to be done and get pricing for each item.

We need more detailed drawings for which we have a guy who has worked with the city before ready to go.Project ManagementRight now we are using a share reminders list for iPhone, Dropbox to share all files, and Excel to track expenses and action items.