Calculating monthly/yearly fees?

Question

I have never purchased property before.  I am trying to learn more about fees and expenses to expect when owning a property.  I know of the obvious expenses like tax, insurance, property management, utilities, repairs, vacancy, and mortgage.  What others are there?  How do you calculate or find out what the insurance or taxes will cost?  How do you accurately estimate repairs?

I would appreciate if you could provide links to BP articles or just post below.  Any information about fees that exist and how to calculate them for a specific property will be helpful for me understand what really goes into owning property!  Thanks!

Adam Johns · Answer

@Kenneth Stuart

I think you got most of the "expected" expenses. One of the reasons that people use the 50% rule is that it should allow you to build up some cash reserves for the unexpected expenses. Say a pipe in a wall bursts, a tree falls, or AC goes out in the middle of summer. Also, if you need to evict someone, you essentially have no rent for maybe a few months as well as legal and court fees.

As far as taxes go, that's public information, and Brevard County's Tax Assessor has a search tool on their website (top right) here: https://www.bcpao.us/paohome.asp

You can search by address, owner's name, and several other fields. Once you find the property, click on the account number and your taxes will be listed at the bottom.

Insurance is pretty easy too. Just about any insurance company has an estimator on their websites. It's not going to be exact, but it should be close enough to run your numbers.

I hope that helped!

Kenneth Stuart · Answer

That's really not very helpful, Oren.  I wouldn't post a question if I could already find the answer.  I have tried searching BP forums and articles but haven't found the information I am looking for.  I have not found the BP search feature to be very useful as the site is so saturated with information that I receive hundreds of results.  If you have any suggestions on how to modify my search parameters to better find the information, please enlighten me.

Based on the information I have read on BP thus far, I have a basic idea of how to calculate some of the expenses, but no complete info, and certainly no article or forum post that lists all the expenses to expect and how to calculate them.

So far this is the only relevant 
article I was able to find, but I feel like there should be more:
http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/01/19/real-estate-math/

Oren K. · Answer

Kenneth,

There are literally hundreds or even thousands of discussion topics regarding something called the 50% rule or the 2% rule. Suggest you do a search (right at the top of the page) and spend a week or so reading. Anything you still have questions on, feel free to ask.

Oren