Hey Tyler, It probably comes down to a question of initial cost vs on-going cost and maintenance requirements.

You’ll likely cashflow (barley) for the first 5 years then even for 5 then negative as maintenance spending arrives like the herpes sore that it is.

Beyond the Monthly Management, Placement & Maintenance fees, all other fees in our contract are IF EVENT -> THEN fees.

My maintenance guy told me he saw 2 cats and a dog.

Happy to provide you with averages for vacancy, what I use for maintenance, taxes, insurance and can even send you some videos on how to best estimate rent rate here haha! 

A little bit of maintenance like this once in a while is par for the course on these old buildings and what the reserves are for.

Can I presume insurance, taxes, maintenance, and management costs will be covered by the 50%?

I don't know the laws, but I would hope that you would eventually be able to recover all lost rent if you were genuinely dealing with the maintenance backlog as fast as you can.This sounds like a really unpleasant situation and I'm sorry that you had to deal with it this soon into your REI journey.

I will make my  $10,000 for my reserve account in 11 months by doing my 5% hold backs for vacancy cap X and maintenance.

I'm able to do minor repairs but would likely need to outsource to a property management team for regular maintenance as my 9-5 has me on the road (post covid).