A not so new guy, success story in the making??
Lord, it’s been going on 4 years and some days I feel like an idiot. I’m not sure if I’m growing fast or the ship is sinking just yet. :).
I have 4 solid rentals, 1 short term AirBNB rental, 3 in need of fixing and 1 commercial unit I'm putting a laundromat in. Commercial building is a separate entity. All but one rental are in an LLC and one is in my personal name. I need to change that, but not sure how other than call the lawyer and pay another $1500!
I have $3k-4500 per month coming in before we closed on the Laundromat commercial building. This is a huge coin toss on if it’ll be good or a most horrific oops. There is not one good laundromat in town soooo this fills a need. It’s location is right but the rest is unknown as it’s all new.
I work my day job to pay for everything as a sole provider for the family. Just to be FI, I would have to triple my fully cash paid portfolio and if taking on debt may 7 times it?!?! Insurance fees with Statefarm are getting close to 12k per year and overall each property value after repairs are only between 55-85k. I’d like to lower the insurance costs or find a better landlord friendly portfolio type policy. I’m wondering if Lloyd’s of London does this or some other master / umbrella policy would be cheaper / more beneficial??
My family is my property management and I know it’s working well now but when I get to far beyond ten they might give out on me. My dad does much of the fixing and this is part of the reason I have 3 sitting in the to be fixed and unrented section of the portfolio. We are in a small town 45 minutes north of Kansas City and the trades really value their services almost to the point of not being able to pay them. They charge more than surgeons and unfortunately I am not a surgeon.... but they aren’t either.
I have spreadsheets for the homes, rents, expenses and gains and it looks like we come out ahead but that is because with all income from the rentals... every 5 years the house should be paid for.... in other words a 20% ROI but that doesn't tell the whole story as I pay management to family and inflation continues to soar.
I’d love to move up in the rentals world and get into Leavenworth and Kansas City but my debt to income ... especially with the Laundromat is starting to appear whoa crazy. I like to say I take manageable risks to where if a place isn’t rented or something happens my work income will cover. This has been fine but... approaching 40 has me in a mid-life desire to decrease my day job. I took a different job to bring in as much but only work 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off. In a year or two I’d like to work 1 week a month. Right now the finances appear I need to wor every week and get paid triple. Does anyone else get a little whelmed or just take the debt in stride as a part of everything? My biggest hate is that most has been funded by credit card and I’m still working excessively to pay the interest/principle each month.
Maybe this is a picture of how not to do things :). But, I know it’ll all come together in a year or two. Just seems tight having 4 units not rented out of 9. Repairs on all are 3-6 months away.