BiggerPockets

Just a Question to people that like to buy houses and rent them out and others that have and still do but also, Buy and sell, Wholesale and all that good stuff. Are you able to be really successful in only Owning houses and renting them out? Nothing else but that? How many houses do you think you would actually need to be able to pay bills your own bills, fix anything the current tenants damage and still have left over "spending money"? 20? 50? Any info or thoughts would be nice. :type:

KnickKnack,

I live off the income from my rentals. How many rentals you need depends on how much income you need each month. If you do everything right, you can generate about $100 per unit per month in positive cash flow. If you are willing to do the management and maintenance yourself, then you can EARN another $100 per unit per month. That means you would have $200 per unit per month. So, divide how much money you need each month by $200 to find the number of units you need. For example, if you need $5,000 per month, then you would need 25 rentals. If you need $10,000 per month, then you need 50 rentals.

Good Luck,

Mike

Very simple in theory, but you will have to work to get your $100 per door properties.

You will need to market yourself as a buyer and then weed out the ones that don't make sense.

I have looked at over 100 properties in the last few weeks. On paper and driving by. Of those 100 looked at, I made 2 offers.

Chris

I could be wrong but I think the 100 per door rule is geared more toward multi unit properties. a SFR could be rented out to one family, or you could rent out the bedrooms to different people, either way I think a SFR counts as more than one "unit" so a SFR should generate at least a few hundred a month but maybe I'm wrong.

Tod and Chris- I think we may have a terminology problem here. I have probably 40 rentals in s. Texas at present. If I was doing all the mgmt and collections, rentals etc, I'd lose my productive time where I make BIG money. It is not worth the effort for the money. To others that need the cash flow, maybe they are ok with it. I'm not.
My time is much more valuable and rewarding to do the research, analysis and acquisition of properties or doing hard money loans.
You might still be able to "manage " your properties if you had an emplyee to do all the grunt work and you were simply in an advisory capacity. Just my thoughts. I've had mgmt companies work for me and I've owned some. It all sucks, but that is a necessary evil in the investment game. Rich.

Rich,

I agree with you. I would not want to manage the day to day, but rather have someone else do it for me.

Chris

The heck with Dave Ramsey!!! I'm proud of Tim also. You don't see that discipline, fortitude and vision in very many folks. Tim just moved up on my ladder of smart people. Congrats Tim. Rich

That's great Tim. I have no debt as well other than mortgages on some of my properties. It keeps life simple and stress free!

Chris

Married with a great wife! Kids in the near future. Things will definately get more stressful once the kids arrive.

Chris

Maybe this needs to be another thread, but if you have 25 sfr's, at what point do you become overwhelmed with managing them yourself?

Twenty five? If you can't manage only 25 rentals, you better look for a different business. Managing 25 rentals takes VERY LITTLE TIME if you're organized. If you're also talking about doing all the maintenance, then you're talking about at a little more time, but it's still not much.

Around here, the bigger apartment complexes have one full time manager doing 175 units and that is just an employee. A motivated, interested owner could certainly do more. With SFHs, the management is even less per unit because the tenants are usually better.

Mike