All Forum Posts by: Amir Navabpour

I’ve seen everything from 5, 10 percent of gross rents and recently seen some use 1 percent of the home purchase price as their input. Curious what you use? On a similar topic, what best practices do you put in place when repair costs run high?

@Henry T. Appreciate the advice!

@John Teachout appreciate the expertise

I have a tall tree (so probably deep roots), that is about 1 yard from the side of my house, and the neighbors fence less than a foot behind it. The tree guy said he can cut it to a stump without taking down the fence, but to grind the stump would need to remove the fence which I want to try to avoid. Here’s my question, I read that you can cut a tree down to the stump and then paint herbicide on the stump and that should kill the roots. My general contractor said that approach isn’t a guarantee to work. As it depends on how deep the roots are. Being so close to the house I want to take care of asap to avoid damage to the foundation. The needle I’m trying to thread is getting the roots addressed without having to remove the neighbors fence that is a foot behind the tree

Anyone have any suggestions on how best to address this?

While we may already be in, (or close to) a technical recession, as of this post we still have a very strong job market in most sectors right now. Supposedly, rental properties hold their value and vacancy is low during downturns because of people trading down to rent, etc. However, I am skeptical that at a time of job loses rentals will not experience higher rates of turnover, non payment of rent and higher eviciton rates. I have only owned rentals for about 6 years, so curious for those of you that owned rentals the last time we had a real uptick in job losses (2008-2010), how did your portfolio hold up on lost rent due to nonpayment, higher vacancy rates, etc? I am specifically thinking about the C+ through B class SFR market.

@Joe Villeneuve can you please expand on what you mean when you say collecting equity in the same property is losing money? Do you mean to say that the opportunity cost of that equity hills up through cash flow equates to a loss?

@Greg R. I would normally agree but here are some things to think about. I live in the Bay Area, California which is a high income area. More and more I hear of relatively high income people leaving purely because affordability and value is a challenge. Additionally, these high appreciation markets also demand much higher salaries which employers don’t like. Employers are much more nimble nowadays in where they hire. I believe remote work will be predominant for white collar jobs in the future and if not that, you see it more and more common for employers hiring in 2nd/3rd tier markets for lower salaries. With these macro trends I think tier 1 traditionally high appreciation areas will be facing a headwind.

@Conner Olsen very helpful perspective, thank you

@Gregory Schwartz yeah you nailed it. The more time goes by the more I come to the conclusion this is a long term game and freezing returns at a point in time like 1, or 2 years in doesn't mean much. My goal is to grow net worth while having moderate cash flow. Most of my total returns have come from appreciation which I consider paper gains. I'd bet some of those paper gains have been wiped out in the last 2 months as rates have gone up. I currently have 13 SFR's. My plan is to get to about 20, have about 10-12 of them fully paid off in 5 years. My ultimate goal is to do a hybrid. Have a portion of my portfolio I carry debt on for long term appreciation/equity pay down, while I get enough income to give me options. Not sure full blown financial freedom is realistic but options

@Nathan G. The renovations are tied to equity value. My coc returns are 7-15 percent which in most cases is usually just a couple hundred bucks a month per door. Spending a couple grand to fly across the country for that doesn’t feel like a slam dunk decision