The standard benchmarks to indicate a sellers or buyers market was 3-6 months of inventory was a sellers market, 6 months is a balanced market and 6-9 months is a buyers market.

I could slap on some new paint and make minor repairs to get same/similar rent as before, or could do moderate improvements to try and hit top of the market rents, but wondering what criteria/benchmarks you all use when considering more moderate/extensive improvements. 

I could slap on some new paint and make minor repairs to get same/similar rent as before, or could do moderate improvements to try and hit top of the market rents, but wondering what criteria/benchmarks you all use when considering more moderate/extensive improvements.

Benchmarking ROI against the S&P is really the only way to know if you are winning as an investor or not. 

To name one example, CoStar just predicted that demand will cool over the next six months, noting that rent growth rose 9.2% in Q2, down from 11.4% in the first quarter.Yet rent growth is still far higher than it was pre-pandemic, with new benchmarks continuing to be set.

General, STR lenders will tend to require liquid assets of about 6 months of payments (including tax and insurance in addition to debt service), I would say thats probably the benchmark, but you can adjust for your risk appetite

On the flip side, solidly performing cash flowing properties will allow you to refinance because the positive cash flow should help your DTI instead of hurt it, and if you went the commercial route with a DSCR loan, it will likely be above the benchmark the lender wants. 

Also - that would potentially put your loan up over 100k, which seems to be a pretty common benchmark for a lot of lenders right now.If you did not want to use funding for the acquisition, you could talk to a lender about putting a lien on it but it would just be for renovations since you already own the property. 

@Ben Leybovich delta aside, wait until the benchmark rises.. that’s what I think quite a few people including myself are concerned about.

Narrow in on a specific area that you’re interested in, then benchmark values in the area.