Ours is about 50 feet from the street and would only be going through lawn.

Kyle, place in some numbers of a house you were looking at, price, mortgage,taxes etc. average rent for the area for same size units. may be a little easier to get answers from people if they can help check your figures. i know in the area that i am investing right now, a 4 bedroom unit runs me $200 / bedroom/ month to run and i have a 2 family with 8 bedrooms that runs me $150- the more bedrooms the less per bedroom. that is without the mortgage. that can fluctuate depending on the cost of the property and the amount you put down, so i leave that number separate. to me Maintenance seems a little high, if you have a unit that collects $1700 per month ( 20,400 yr ) at 15% that's $3060 for lawn care and snow removal. i pay half that $1500 - so that's 7 1/2 percent ( these numbers come from my 4 bedroom unit ( 1700 & 1500 )). that would be another 1500 in your pocket. what you can do is ask a management co. in the area what is the typical charge for maintenance, or a local landscaper. that 1500 could make a difference in your numbers, and there may be others. show a sample and you may get some insight from others

But remember you have 5 different roofs, 5 different properties, 5 lawns to maintain, etc.Good luck!

I have a tenant that lives in one of my units that did some lawn care work for me, which went fine.

Too many owners buy a rental and then screw it up by not screening applications or knowing how to deal with tenants that don't pay rent or water the lawn.

I used asking price and the higher repair cost and lower rent cost as to not artificially inflate the numbers to make a non deal into a deal.

This question is in regards to lawn maintenance.  

Everything else is either 1) a corollary of a core principle or 2) noise and artificial barriers to entry.While I certainly appreciate being scrappy and hustling and trying to get into deals with nothing, it's just not something I'm interested in doing.

If you spot peeling old paint and a lawn that looks taken care of, that usually means that the inside is in good shape.

While it's true that you only have one roof, one lawn, one tax bill.... all of these items are MUCH bigger.