Need advice on first investment property purchase

[Devin Lutz]

I don't a duplex that I've made a couple offers on and need a bit of advice before I decide to make a final offer.

This will be my first purchase. It's a duplex that looked to be in very good shape aside from the roof from what I could see on the first walk through.

The house has been listed for about 4 months and they were asking 215k. My first offer was 160k and they countered at 205k. I just put in a new offer of 170k and I'm waiting to hear back from the seller.

I'm going to have an inspection done on the house but the only real concern I have so far is that I noticed the roof has what loked like a bottom layer of wooden shingles and probably at least 2 or 3 layers of asphalt shingles on top of that. Due to this im pretty sure the roof will need to be redone. So I'm looking for advice on how I could approach the roof situation so I don't go over budget.

In in Idaho and don't know the price of roofing but would it be safe to estimate 15-20k for a new roof or is that going overboard?

Here are the numbers in looking at so far for this property if it helps

Most I'll pay for the duplex is 185k

700 rent each unit and they pay their own utilities but I think I could easily charge 800 to 850 a month.

The mortgage should be around $1200 a month so I'd have an extra 400 per month to save for expenses

And I'm expecting a roof to cost anywhere from 12k to 20k

Any thoughts on this please?

Thanks for any advice

[Don Spafford]

@Devin Lutz Without knowing the size or shape of the roof, and depending on what materials you use for it, the roof would probably be on the lower end of your estimate. But you can easily get a free estimate from some roofers if you still have time for that. You should use the BP calculator at a minimum to estimate your expected cash flow. Have you asked for an estimate on insurance? Was that included in your mortgage estimate as well as property taxes? Be sure to account for repairs & vacancy, and property management. Even if you plan to self-manage, include it in your expenses. In case one day you no longer can or want to manage it, you will know if you will still cash flow or not.