All Forum Posts by: Wainwright Yu

Exciting time to be in real estate, Sean! Are you looking for multifamily properties in any specific part of the Seattle area? Great deals are hard to come by in North Seattle and the nearby cities over the past year or so. You may have to venture further up north (Everett, Marysville, etc) to find great deals in today's market. Of course, since your plan is to house hack, you may have more wiggle room in your criteria.

Hey Andy - My business partner and I also invest in the Greater Seattle area (mostly south King county and Pierce county where you can more easily find buy and hold deals that actually cash flow. It's tough in the Seattle/Eastside core. I'd actually be curious to hear whether or not your Bothell condo cash flows given the price to rent ratios aren't that favorable in those neighborhoods. Anyway, my business partner and I also work at one of your well known Seattle tech companies and we developed software that helps us automatically analyze all MLS listings in real time and send us a notification when we find a cash flow positive property. We've been using it for about half a year now and have expanded it to support SFH, condos and small multifamily properties. It's been super helpful to help us find good deals and make multiple offers per week while working full time. We are considering opening it up for beta testing for a limited period of time. No strings attached. Just a request to send us feedback and write us a review if you end up finding a great deal through our tool. Let me know if you're interested.

Oh and add insurance too though that's typically not a big cost driver.

Other costs you may want to consider baking into your model are (a) property management costs of 8-10% per month plus an amortized placement fee of 50% of rent and (b) CAPEX reserve when you will eventually need to replace appliances, carpets, paint, roof, etc. Even if I plan to manage the property myself, I always like to build in property management into my model. It gives me the opportunity to fall back into property management if needed. It also helps me count the cost of my labor in the model. Otherwise, I think you've got the right expense line items!