All Forum Posts by: Thorsten Ziehme

Thank you for your replies. I am working on a list of expenses that we'd have to expect. Could you please add to this list or give my advice on additional details?
Here is what I've got so far:

1. Down payment (How much should a expect for a condo at the beach as a second home in percentage?)

2. Interior (Sofas, beds, etc.)

3. Mortage

4. HOA fees

5. Home Insurance

6. Maintenance/Repairs

7. Taxes

(8. Parking)

Do I really need to hire a service that will do all these things for us? My plan was to do this myself. Post it online, talk to potential renters, drive down, sign contract, hand over key, come back one week later, clean up, start all over again.

The plan was to not rent it out for the first 2-3 months so we can add things like beds, sofas, kitchen stuff, etc. so I guess we would provide all of this.

Doesn't a hired service make it pretty much imposible to make a profit?
That would mean I have mortage, taxes, repairs, fees, and lord knows what. I just can't see rent even that out.

Correct me if I am wrong. It just seems to me like I could save a lot of money by doing it myself.

Thank you for you reply. Myrtle Beach is here in South Carolina though so Hurricans are not that big of a deal like in Florida.

Hi,

This is my first post on this forum so I’d like to say hello to y’all. I am a native German and live in Greenville, SC w/ my American wife and three kids. We just started looking into buying a condo at the beach.
Just to give you a heads up. I am in the beginning of the beginning of hopefully becoming a landlord.

Here is our plan.
We would like to buy a condo in the Myrtle Beach area that we would like to rent out occasionally. I don’t really want to rent it out to one person that lives in it full time because I’d like to go to the beach and stay at our condo whenever we feel like it. I think we’d probably go down once a month for the weekend and maybe a little more during off-season. So that leaves plenty of room for renting it out throughout the year.

I’d like to know what expenses I’d have to expect that I might not even be thinking about yet. I want to do my homework before we really do anything.

We found some nice condos for about $85.000 that would really fit our needs. 3 bedrooms, close to the beach, community pool.

If we would put 6% down, the monthly est. mortgage would be roughly $360. The monthly fees in that apartment complex are $200.

[b]Expenses:
$360 Mortgage
$200 Fees
$60 Maintenance/Repairs on Average per month
$??? Property taxes
$??? Home Insurance

[/b]Earnings:
$??? Rent per week on average.

Could anyone possibly fill in my blanks and let me know what other expenses we’d have to expect? I could ask so many more questions but I’d just like to get a conversation started first.
Thank you for your help. I appreciate it.