My mentor / business partner who is showing me the ropes in RE is starting his own property management business after being in the real estate game for 13 years.He is offering me a job in said property management business as an on-call maintenance person, and also said he can pay me to do yellow letters for him (I currently send out a lot of them for my own investing purposes).He said he can either pay me for each letter, or a 10-15% commission on income from any leads I generate (so if I land him a property that he makes $150/mo on, I would make $15-$22.50/mo on each property. 20 properties = $300-$450 / mo total).Either way, he will pay for all the material and postage- so I'll just be taking care of the rest (printing, packing, sending).

Look into deferred maintenance.

Ask for elevator maintenance records and see what they are spending on those per year.Is the maintenance guy in-house or do they subcontract maintenance, take a look at the cleaning contract.

You're thinking about great things but you need to just get started first and experience land lording, cash flow, maintenance and the other challenges that come.

He asserted that the prices asked were a "solid 8.5% cap," but a quick glance at the numbers reveal that all of the soft costs - capex, maintenance, vacancy and property management - were disregarded.

Real estate Operators need management and maintenance people.

As long as there isn't huge deferred maintenance it could be a great opportunity.

In your case, monthly rents of $1600 will be $19,200 annually and half ($9600) will be spent on expenses.

. $600-1200 annually-Access to the MLS...... $700 per year-Electronic Lockbox access...... $200 per year-E&O Insurance ...... . . $700 per year-Continuing education classes..... $200 per year-Test and Study materials to get license- $500-Brokerage fees - Depends on the broker

My calculations, in our market (they all vary, I am basing this on 1.5% rent per month of purchase price) based on a 60% LTV Non-recourse loan, shows we should make an annual rate of return of 15% without or 22% with appreciation (based on our 40 year average).I just thought I would mention this as I was not sure what figures you were coming up with as you try to decide how best to go about things.Dan Dietz