Rental Property Investment Analysis

[etotheipi]

I originally posted this in the Armory thread, because I was explaining why I neglected Armory for a week.  But the subsequent discussion is very off-topic for that thread, so I'll continue it here.  The link to spreadsheet is in my first post, but here it is again:

Spreadsheet for analyzing rental property investments.

The numbers that are pre-filled in are extremely representative of the 1100 sqft condo currently on the market that inspired this discussion.  kjj's first response was very much tailored for a single-family home.  I think it was excellent advice in general (which this thread can be about), but not so applicable to my potential situation.  Read on below and contribute your advice!  Especially, if you have any actual experience with rental properties and the taxes.


Original posting:

Mostly-random posting (updating you on what I have been doing instead of Armory developement):

I have been neglecting Armory completely the last few days, because I got nerd-sniped trying to figure out the investment quality of buying rental property.  This came up because my new fiance and I started counting up each others' financials and realized that a dual-income will leave some headroom for investing.  And we noticed some nearby properties that are going for super-cheap which we could rent out for much higher than the mortgage payments.  

So I spent the last few days diligently digging into IRS publications, and making spreadsheets to try to model the relative investment potential of the rental property, taking into account every relevant tax code.  Partially for curiosity, partially for education, but ultimately because it's feasible we could do this in a couple years.  What I found surprised me.  And I have included everything on this spreadsheet, which I am posting because others might find it useful, and the time spent making it would otherwise have been spent on Armory development, which is what you were probably expecting

I won't go into extraordinary detail about it here (off-topic!), but this spreadsheet assumes that the initial closing costs on the loan are your "investment", and compares your movement in net worth to a fixed-rate-of-return asset.  What's your overall equity&cash gain through an entire cycle of purchase, rent it out, pay taxes, sell it, and then pay more taxes?  For this particular property, it looks like approximately 11% annualized return for 10 years.  That's hardcore!  

It appears that house prices have dropped dramatically, but rent prices have not.  Perhaps this happened because the shitty economy has made it very difficult for people to do anything about the market inefficiency.  I'm sure many people see the opportunity but can't act on it because they can't get the credit, and/or don't have capital for down payment and closing costs

None of this constitutes financial or tax advice.  I just thought it might be educational, and I'm sure there's a lot of investor types reading this.  Perhaps you have some experience with this and will PM me your thoughts about it!

Your occupancy rate seems high, and your annual repairs numbers seem low.  (Not based on any hard evidence, just what my gut says, but my gut is very conservative.)  Also, you need to pay for management, either in the value of your time, or as cash to a service.  If you have good friends in need of a home to rent, and you don't mind losing them as friends, the management cost can be reduced considerably.

More on the occupancy rate.  A 95% occupancy rate doesn't mean that you earn 95% of the rent income each month, it means that you need to make the mortgage payments out of pocket for an average of 12 months over 20 years.  That means that you need $34k to close, not $22k, and you need to be vigilant about not spending that contingency fund on anything but mortgage payments, and you must replenish it first, before taking profits.  You must assume that those 12 months that you have to pay out of pocket will come at the absolute worst time, when you have both lost your jobs and don't have outside cashflow to make the payments from your regular income.

Also, you have to resist the temptation to dip into the repair fund for non-repair costs.  If you spend less on repairs for a few years than you planned for, you can bet that the water main under the front lawn is going to pop the following year and wipe you out, or a storm will send a tree through a wall, or something.  Don't expect to use your insurance policy to cover things that are really repairs.  You should probably also put a few years worth of repairs into the fund up front, further increasing your closing costs.

The good news will come a few years down the road, when you have multiple units and you can start to make reasonable expectations that the law of averages will be working on your side instead of against you.

Oh, and for the love of god, incorporate.  Hopefully a different company for each property.  Nevada has no corporate income taxes, and it is super easy to incorporate there.  Plus, you get to fly to Vegas to apply for bank accounts in person, which is always fun.  This may be futile though, since your state may hit you with corporate income taxes on the basis of the property under rental being in the state, even if you try very hard to properly establish a nexus in Nevada.  Check with your lawyer (and get a lawyer).  Take the corporation seriously, follow all of the procedures and your bylaws to the letter, do all of the paperwork by the book, don't commingle your funds.  When you get to multiple properties, have a corporation that owns the corporations that own them, and let that holding corp manage the pooled repair and vacancy funds.

Make sure that your accountant takes you out on the boat that you are going to buy him on the installment plan for keeping your books straight.  (And get an accountant.)

Thanks for the feedback!  The particular properties we're looking at are condos.  The by-laws of the condos are standard, which means that a $5k HVAC replacement is about as extreme as the repairs get, and that's probably once every 10 years (at most).  Anything more expensive than that is going to be covered either by HOA or insurance (i.e. every example you mentioned in your previous post).  If you add up all the appliances in a 1100 sq ft condo, it doesn't even add up to $10k.  So I think it's actually crazy to suggest I'd spend $17k over 10 years.  If I did, that would be a 99.5th percentile kind of thing.

The 95% occupancy accounts for time between tenants.  That is definitely not a down payment thing:  you might pay a little bit upfront while first finding a tenant, but once you have an income stream, the vacancy periods are covered by your profits to that point.  I don't need to contribute more money from my personal bank account to cover those, unless I was really irresponsible with the cash stream (which is the opposite of my financial personality)/  Though, perhaps I should add a little bit to the "cash to close" to cover the initial tenant search -- though even that may be minimal since I might find someone while waiting to close.

Also, this property would be in the same condo association as we already live in.  There's no necessity to pay a management company for one property that is across the parking lot.  If we start accumulating lots of rental properties, it might become worth it.    So, I totally agree with your assessment if this was a single-family home, but the variance on a condo is dramatically lower than on a regular house.  The HOA fees are a form of insurance.  Also, in this particular HOA, there has not been a special assessment ever in the 25 years since it was built.

However, I do like your advice about incorporating.  Again, it might be kind of overkill for a single unit, especially when it looks so cash-positive, but if we start really getting into it, it sounds like there's lots of options for "optimizing" our tax burden  Very interesting!    And thanks for the feedback.  I'll investigate Nevada tax code!

Just make sure that the funding is available for inter-tenant periods.  If you are thrifty by nature and have a lot in savings, you won't mind having that money in a designated account, and doing so will remind you that if you ever use it, you are dipping into a fund with a purpose, and that you'd better be pretty certain that the purpose won't show up when you least expect it.

The incorporation part isn't about taxes.  And actually, depending on your state, will probably make you pay more in taxes.  The real purpose is that you have unlimited liability for things that happen in your property.  Insurance policies have limits, possibly leaving you on the hook for the overage.  Having each property owned by a different corporation helps shield your other assets.  If someone falls in a house that you own personally, you could lose everything you own, including other rental properties and your personal assets.  If the corporation owns the house, and you are careful, it is hard to pierce the veil and expand the scope of the losses to the other corporation's assets, or to your personal assets.  It also provides some protection in the other direction, but is harder to set up properly.  In theory, it should be possible to get sued personally, and have your ownership in the properties shielded from that judgment.

By the way, I normally despise HOAs, but it sounds like yours could be great for what you want to do.

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[etotheipi]

Just make sure that the funding is available for inter-tenant periods.  If you are thrifty by nature and have a lot in savings, you won't mind having that money in a designated account, and doing so will remind you that if you ever use it, you are dipping into a fund with a purpose, and that you'd better be pretty certain that the purpose won't show up when you least expect it.

The incorporation part isn't about taxes.  And actually, depending on your state, will probably make you pay more in taxes.  The real purpose is that you have unlimited liability for things that happen in your property.  Insurance policies have limits, possibly leaving you on the hook for the overage.  Having each property owned by a different corporation helps shield your other assets.  If someone falls in a house that you own personally, you could lose everything you own, including other rental properties and your personal assets.  If the corporation owns the house, and you are careful, it is hard to pierce the veil and expand the scope of the losses to the other corporation's assets, or to your personal assets.  It also provides some protection in the other direction, but is harder to set up properly.  In theory, it should be possible to get sued personally, and have your ownership in the properties shielded from that judgment.

By the way, I normally despise HOAs, but it sounds like yours could be great for what you want to do.

This HOA is very good.  They charge a little bit more than neighboring associations, but they maintain very good reserves, and still have plenty leftover for other stuff (such as replacing the pool!).  It was one of my criteria when purchasing, and so far I haven't been disappointed.

The liability is a valid concern.  And while I recognize that "crazy shit can happen," I question how bad it can get.  The tenant has to prove that I was aware of the problem, a record of notifications/requests made to me, and that I was negligent in repairing it.  My understanding is that if you make every reasonable effort to address it, it's no contest.  Even if such shit happens, most of these landlord insurance policies cover quite a bit.    It's dirt cheap (relative to everything else) to increase a "standard" landlord policy to $500k coverage of such events.  Sounds like it's worth it!

[kjj]

This HOA is very good.  They charge a little bit more than neighboring associations, but they maintain very good reserves, and still have plenty leftover for other stuff (such as replacing the pool!).  It was one of my criteria when purchasing, and so far I haven't been disappointed.

The liability is a valid concern.  And while I recognize that "crazy shit can happen," I question how bad it can get.  The tenant has to prove that I was aware of the problem, a record of notifications/requests made to me, and that I was negligent in repairing it.  My understanding is that if you make every reasonable effort to address it, it's no contest.  Even if such shit happens, most of these landlord insurance policies cover quite a bit.    It's dirt cheap (relative to everything else) to increase a "standard" landlord policy to $500k coverage of such events.  Sounds like it's worth it!

The problem as I see it is that the legal system isn't deterministic.  Doing everything right seems to be a necessary condition for not getting screwed in court, but not a sufficient one.  Defense in depth seems to be the key, be a responsible landlord, but don't assume that your tenants are going to be responsible back.  Losing in court may not be likely, but it sure would suck if that wiped you out.

Nevada's corporate laws are very lopsided in favor of asset protection, and ease of use.  There are costs to be sure; the trade off is one that you have to decide on your own after researching the implications (tax and otherwise) thoroughly.  I've seriously considered setting up a Nevada corporation to own my car for me, if that gives you some idea of my personal feelings on the matter, but I can see how just about everyone else would consider that overkill in light of the meager assets that I would be protecting.

S-corps are generally preferred for federal tax reasons, but they have limitations in ownership that might matter when setting up a more complicated structure.  As in, I think that all shareholders must be US natural persons, not other corps or trusts or whatever.

[amencon]

I own some rental property and actually have been actively looking to acquire more very recently.  Your spreadsheet looks pretty thorough (the one I made for myself was a bit less detailed so I might steal this one in the future, thanks!).

According to my own experiences for ~100k properties you will want at least $1500 in rent revenue to cash flow well.  Properties around 150k should gross 2000+ at least.

For me what counts is that the property will still cash flow even after HOA, warranty and property management fees since the idea is to grab many of these to generate passive income without sucking up too much of your time.  You can oversee a lot of properties that all make you money easily if they are all managed by a professional, however managing even a single property on your own can potentially suck up a lot of your time and be a big headache not to mention liability.

In my area while there may be some single family homes that would fit the above criteria they wouldn't cash flow much.  The real winners are 4plex multi-family units for this (and more units if you can qualify for a commercial loan).  I would strongly recommend you look at affordable 4plex properties in the area and run the numbers on them.

About 1.5 years ago I bought a 4plex for under 100k and am renting each unit out for around 600.  Those types of deals have dried up quick in my area but it looks like I can get a similar property now for 130-150k ish which would still be decently profitable.

Good luck man.

[BitcoinINV]

I was just talking about this the other day in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112121.0 I will follow this thread to see where it goes! Very Very intrested

[etotheipi]

I own some rental property and actually have been actively looking to acquire more very recently.  Your spreadsheet looks pretty thorough (the one I made for myself was a bit less detailed so I might steal this one in the future, thanks!).

According to my own experiences for ~100k properties you will want at least $1500 in rent revenue to cash flow well.  Properties around 150k should gross 2000+ at least.

For me what counts is that the property will still cash flow even after HOA, warranty and property management fees since the idea is to grab many of these to generate passive income without sucking up too much of your time.  You can oversee a lot of properties that all make you money easily if they are all managed by a professional, however managing even a single property on your own can potentially suck up a lot of your time and be a big headache not to mention liability.

In my area while there may be some single family homes that would fit the above criteria they wouldn't cash flow much.  The real winners are 4plex multi-family units for this (and more units if you can qualify for a commercial loan).  I would strongly recommend you look at affordable 4plex properties in the area and run the numbers on them.

About 1.5 years ago I bought a 4plex for under 100k and am renting each unit out for around 600.  Those types of deals have dried up quick in my area but it looks like I can get a similar property now for 130-150k ish which would still be decently profitable.

Good luck man.

One of the primary motivations behind this was that the property would be next door.  This dramatically cuts down on "unknowns", since I've already lived in the same HOA for 2+ years.  I know all the fees, what the construction is like, what problems are consistent across many units, how much it costs to replace appliances, etc.   I recognize there is potential headache associated with property management, but I'm minimizing the amount of headache by being right there and knowing so much about it already. 

Also, I know some other people who flip/rent properties, and have good contractors they use for these things.  I really can't imagine needing to pay 8% for professional management of this single property.  Plus, I'm part time at my real job, which gives me lots of flexibility to deal with issues.  The other benefit is that I am near a lot of really high-quality work places -- it's not unlikely I can find someone at my work (5,000+ employees) to rent, which gives me a good chance of smooth sailing...

But once I got 2-3 or three properties, I think it makes sense for management. 

Also, I do recognize the whole liability thing, and obviously I want to avoid it.  I just wonder if there's not going to be a bigger headache dealing with intra-state corporate laws and incorporation, to avoid something that is about as likely as winning the lottery.  Yes, super-nasty things have happened to landlords.  But I can spend my whole life worrying about that, and then get killed by a drunk driver tomorrow.  But maybe I'm underestimating the likelihood of something like that happening...

Part of the appeal for us was that I thought this could be done, not only in the same complex as we're already in, but without hiring lawyers, accountants, or doing endless paperwork for incorporating and complicating the hell out of my taxes.  The more stuff we throw on top, the less interested we are in pursuing this.  But, maybe it's fantasy to believe that we can pull this off (safely!) without all that mess.

[jgarzik]

JFYI...  we currently own two single family homes, right next door to each other.  We are trying to sell the smaller of the two, but renting it out has crossed our minds.  Many of our friends are landlords, too:  young, a little bit of financial headroom, own 1-2 properties.

The main thing that stops us?  Being landlords to our neighbors.  Two data points:

1) My story:  About a decade ago, when I was a renter, I lived next door to my landlord, who seemed a very reasonable fellow.  Late one night, I heard banging on our door.  It was the landlord's girlfriend, who had just been beaten by the landlord.  We protected her, called the police, who came and carted the landlord off to jail.  The next day, the landlord was out... and served us immediately with eviction papers.  It was a fraudulent eviction, I called our sexy attack dog lawyer, and things got legally nasty for a while.

2) Friends' anecdotes:  As a landlord, they say, you will eventually evict someone.  It is inevitable.  Therefore,

• Follow eviction procedures in the lease to the letter.  Do not give second chances, accept partial payments, etc. or they will bite you in court.
• If you rent to friends, remember you may have to evict that friend.
• If you live near the property, you have to live near someone who hates you, for kicking you out of "their home."

So go for it... as long as you are not next door neighbors to your renters.

[StinkiePhish]

Disclaimer: IANYL, nor may I provide tax advice.

If you want to avoid all the craziness of accountants and lawyers (now), form an LLC. They are laughably easy to form. From a legal standpoint, you get the benefit of limited liability. That way, if anything does come up in the future (completely regardless if you have been doing everything correct or not), your personal assets are not at stake or at issue. From a tax standpoint, the IRS has made it as easy as checking a box on your individual 1040. The LLC is a "disregarded entity" in the eyes of the IRS, and its income is reported as your individual income. I do not know what you forego in terms of being able to claim deductions of the business; talk to an accountant.

[amencon]

I own some rental property and actually have been actively looking to acquire more very recently.  Your spreadsheet looks pretty thorough (the one I made for myself was a bit less detailed so I might steal this one in the future, thanks!).

According to my own experiences for ~100k properties you will want at least $1500 in rent revenue to cash flow well.  Properties around 150k should gross 2000+ at least.

For me what counts is that the property will still cash flow even after HOA, warranty and property management fees since the idea is to grab many of these to generate passive income without sucking up too much of your time.  You can oversee a lot of properties that all make you money easily if they are all managed by a professional, however managing even a single property on your own can potentially suck up a lot of your time and be a big headache not to mention liability.

In my area while there may be some single family homes that would fit the above criteria they wouldn't cash flow much.  The real winners are 4plex multi-family units for this (and more units if you can qualify for a commercial loan).  I would strongly recommend you look at affordable 4plex properties in the area and run the numbers on them.

About 1.5 years ago I bought a 4plex for under 100k and am renting each unit out for around 600.  Those types of deals have dried up quick in my area but it looks like I can get a similar property now for 130-150k ish which would still be decently profitable.

Good luck man.

One of the primary motivations behind this was that the property would be next door.  This dramatically cuts down on "unknowns", since I've already lived in the same HOA for 2+ years.  I know all the fees, what the construction is like, what problems are consistent across many units, how much it costs to replace appliances, etc.   I recognize there is potential headache associated with property management, but I'm minimizing the amount of headache by being right there and knowing so much about it already. 

Also, I know some other people who flip/rent properties, and have good contractors they use for these things.  I really can't imagine needing to pay 8% for professional management of this single property.  Plus, I'm part time at my real job, which gives me lots of flexibility to deal with issues.  The other benefit is that I am near a lot of really high-quality work places -- it's not unlikely I can find someone at my work (5,000+ employees) to rent, which gives me a good chance of smooth sailing...

But once I got 2-3 or three properties, I think it makes sense for management. 

Also, I do recognize the whole liability thing, and obviously I want to avoid it.  I just wonder if there's not going to be a bigger headache dealing with intra-state corporate laws and incorporation, to avoid something that is about as likely as winning the lottery.  Yes, super-nasty things have happened to landlords.  But I can spend my whole life worrying about that, and then get killed by a drunk driver tomorrow.  But maybe I'm underestimating the likelihood of something like that happening...

Part of the appeal for us was that I thought this could be done, not only in the same complex as we're already in, but without hiring lawyers, accountants, or doing endless paperwork for incorporating and complicating the hell out of my taxes.  The more stuff we throw on top, the less interested we are in pursuing this.  But, maybe it's fantasy to believe that we can pull this off (safely!) without all that mess.

Your plan makes sense to me and I doubt it will be much trouble.  Opening a business acct and forming an LLC on legalzoom should be a snap if you were nervous about liability plus there are plenty of good boilerplate rental agreements and contracts you can use for your tenants.

In my opinion it is good to protect yourself as much as possible, however many people seem so paranoid of worst case scenarios they miss out on potentially good opportunities.

Hope it works out and doesn't steal too much time away from the good works your doing on Armory of course.

[etotheipi]

Disclaimer: IANYL, nor may I provide tax advice.

If you want to avoid all the craziness of accountants and lawyers (now), form an LLC. They are laughably easy to form. From a legal standpoint, you get the benefit of limited liability. That way, if anything does come up in the future (completely regardless if you have been doing everything correct or not), your personal assets are not at stake or at issue. From a tax standpoint, the IRS has made it as easy as checking a box on your individual 1040. The LLC is a "disregarded entity" in the eyes of the IRS, and its income is reported as your individual income. I do not know what you forego in terms of being able to claim deductions of the business; talk to an accountant.

Corporations sound complicated and scary.  I always assumed they come with endless paperwork and generally require lawyers or endless research to deal with it.  It sounds like I will have to do some research on LLCs to see what it takes, and I'll be pleasantly surprised about how easy it is.  I wonder if it also allows me to take certain deductions I otherwise wouldn't be able to (such as passive income losses, which can't offset ordinary income if you make more than $150k/yr, unless you are a real-estate professional -- this is not modeled in the spreadsheet, btw, because the purchase/rent ratio is so favorable, I rarely have to worry about annual cash losses; equity losses are handled entirely separately).  i.e. now that it is owned by a corp, I wonder if all losses become deductible, etc.  Perhaps, if Romney becomes CEO of the US, he will make conditions more favorable for us small businesses... though I suspect most tax changes would be geared towards benefitting the already-successful multi-multi-millionaire crowd...

Your plan makes sense to me and I doubt it will be much trouble.  Opening a business acct and forming an LLC on legalzoom should be a snap if you were nervous about liability plus there are plenty of good boilerplate rental agreements and contracts you can use for your tenants.

In my opinion it is good to protect yourself as much as possible, however many people seem so paranoid of worst case scenarios they miss out on potentially good opportunities.

Hope it works out and doesn't steal too much time away from the good works your doing on Armory of course.

Thanks.  And part of the reason this is attractive is because it seems like it should be very little work on average for 8% return (under reasonable circumstances).  If it looks like it's going to be much higher than that, then we just pay for a mgmt company to deal with it.  Free time (for things like Armory) has always been high on my priority list.

So go for it... as long as you are not next door neighbors to your renters.

Excellent advice jgarzik.  I will have to keep in mind the social aspect of this.  Being the nerd that I am, social confrontation is not my favorite activity, but I think I can handle it.  I will be sure, if I carry through with this idea, I will get a unit in one of the buildings on the other side of the association   Still walking distance, but don't have to run into the tenant on a daily basis.

[etotheipi]

Okay, fun research on LLC's.  They are pretty easy to create and maintain -- initial filing, and one annual filing per year.  And it must have its own bank account, which is used to collect rent and pay expenses, and transfer profits to you.  The account doesn't need to be used for 100% of business operations, but it does need to be used 0% for personal finances.  Any money that you want to use for personal finances can simply be "paid to you" by the LLC.   I'm pretty sure that's just a fancy way to say "write yourself a check from your business bank account".  

$100 filing in MD to start, but $300 annual filing fee after that.  It's not a deal-breaker, but it is doubling my insurance costs.  But I assume it's at least tax-deductible...?  

Having done some research on this now, I stumbled across one article that was rather blunt about how to really minimize your liability exposure.  This is some serious LLC magic:

[You should] decrease the value of the asset itself by mortgaging the property. If you have one rental property inside your LLC worth $100,000 and you have no mortgage on the property, you stand to lose up to $100,000. If the same property inside your LLC has a $90,000 mortgage on it, you stand to only lose up to $10,000. If you choose to thus "strip" the equity from your property to devalue it for asset protection purposes, you can use a commercial lender to take the cash out to invest it in stocks and bonds, pay off personal debt, purchase more rental properties, or utilize it any other way you choose. Either way, you have taken most of the value out of the LLC, and protected it from liabilities that arise inside the LLC.

Ideally, you will strip all of the value from the properties inside your LLC so that you lose no value if your insurance doesn't cover the liability. You will not lose the property itself either, because it has no value, the judgment creditor will abandon it. Even if it is producing rental income, the income has to go to the mortgage holder(s) first, before it can go to a judgment holder. If the judgment holder is content to place a judgment lien on the property and wait till the rents pay down the mortgage(s) and create equity, foreclosure on the mortgages can erase the judgment lien.

I'm sure it's not quite that simple, but I'm sure it's not too far out, either.  This kind of reminds me of sandboxing security-sensitive software -- your goal is to completely isolate it, so that no matter what goes wrong, nothing can escape the sandbox.  In this case, you can try to continuously transfer all the value of the LLC out of the sandbox... to you.

This is a bit extreme, but it's educational.  Given just how unlikely it is for this kind of thing to crop up and overrun my insurance, I don't think I need to play these games.  But if it turns out to be easy, why not?  

As long as there is only one owner, you can "pass-thru" the finances to your personal tax filings.  If there are multiple owners (such as husband and wife), you'll have to file it as a separate entity.  Apparently, you can avoid this by having one person be the sole proprietor and give the other the "right to survivorship" in the event of death of the first owner.