rental properties

Choosing Properties

mrsonedollarallowance4 Comments

Choosing Properties

Mr. ODA has regular emails come in with new listings in the areas we’re interested in. While some of our houses are 2 bedroom, we find it easier to rent 3 bedroom houses. We also are looking to the possibility of resale, which is better for the 3 and 4 bedroom houses.

First, we look at the condition of the property. We’re interested in properties that can be immediately rented, meaning we’re not looking for remodel projects. Most of our properties purchased required no work to prepare it for a renter, and they are typically recently updated. When I say these houses were recently updated, they weren’t top-of-the-line finishes.  Here’s an example of one we purchase 4 years ago, and the pink knobs are still there!

There are a few properties that took slightly more work. We purchased one property that required a whole-house paint job (including trim work) that took a week doing it myself. We also attempted to rent another property with old carpet on the main floor. The potential renter asked if we’d be willing replace it or refinish the floors; we ended up taking a week to refinish the floors, which has paid off in the long run.

Typically, we’re going to replace appliances, paint, and scrub the place down to prepare it for renting. We’re not looking to overhaul the building or do massive capital improvements for that first renter. However, I’ll note that it doesn’t mean we don’t eventually do that. Just this past year, we had several roof replacements/repairs, plumbing replacements, and HVAC repairs.

We want the house to be in good condition to keep a renter there (we’ve actually had very low turnover), make it easy to re-rent it when there is a vacancy, and to make it attractive for any future sale. We’ve noticed that homes that were typically owned instead of rented are in better condition than if it was managed by a landlord. We seem to struggle wanting to move forward with houses that are currently rented because of all the deferred maintenance.

We have been under contract on multiple houses that we walked away from after the home inspection (e.g., knob-and-tube wiring, vertical clearance requirements on stairs, remnants of a previous fire found, poor patch work). Don’t feel like you’re in too deep if the inspection comes back to show a lot of improvements are necessary. It’s a hard mentality to talk yourself (and your partner) through because you’ve spent time looking at the house, reviewing rental comps, possibly reviewing current lease agreements, and spent the money and time for the home inspection. But keep in mind that it’s not worth purchasing the house and spending more than you’d like to keep the house standing and rentable.

Then, in broad strokes, we’re watching the 1% Rule. This means the monthly rent should be 1% of the purchase price (e.g., a purchase of $100,000 house should yield $1,000 per month in rent). Review current rent prices in the immediate vicinity. We’ve purchased houses in areas that have several rental properties, so it’s been fairly easy to identify a rate based on the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as the amenities we can offer (e.g., appliances, lease term, parking availability). In future posts, I’ll provide the details of each of our purchases.  

Here’s a break-down of our current properties related to the 1% Rule. 

You can see that we didn’t hit the 1% on 5 of them. The first had a tenant when we purchased it 4 years ago; we’ve risen the rent once and plan to raise it to $1200 at the renewal term in July (so raised the rent $50 every two years). The bottom two were in a market that we were unfamiliar with, and even though we thought we would yield $990 easily for rent (yes, is still below 1%), the houses were in excellent condition, so we looked to the future value in the decision making. Unfortunately, we didn’t close on these until September, which is difficult to find renters. We didn’t have many showings at ~$1,000 rent. We ended up lowering the rental price by offering an 18-month lease so that the future rental timeframe was in the spring, and we offered the rest of October as free.

Mr. ODA developed a spreadsheet to calculate all the costs associated with owning the house, which helps determine whether the house fits our portfolio goals, especially if it doesn’t exactly meet the 1% Rule. This spreadsheet makes assumptions for routine maintenance costs, capital improvement costs, vacancy assumptions, insurance, mortgage interest, etc. Calculate the monthly rent less than the monthly cost of each of these assumptions to arrive at the monthly cash flow. Annualize the monthly cash flow, and then divide it by the down payment and closing costs to arrive at a ‘cash-on-cash’ return, which we’re looking to be at least 8-10%.

Next, we examine the neighborhood. We have thresholds for prospective tenants, which typically yields to a middle-of-the-road neighborhood. We’re not looking for a perfect, upscale neighborhood to own a rental because these types of homes rarely meet the 1% Rule. I utilize Trulia to examine the crime rates of the area. We want to offer homes that are in reasonable city locations.

I had fully vetted one house and determined it was worth our purchase. A similar house, with an upgraded kitchen, was for sale a couple of blocks away. I assumed it was the same neighborhood and didn’t do my due diligence. The house showed very well online, and we had several showings from qualified individuals, but then they’d check the house details, only to find out that it was in a high crime zone. We ended up having to lower our credit score threshold to find a renter (compensating with additional security deposit), then had difficulties for over a year collecting her rent, which really should have been expected. We have since sold off that property. 

If all these steps, including the cash-on-cash evaluation, should take about an hour. If we get this far, we go see the house. If the house is in the condition we expect it to be based on the pictures, we make an offer. Our Realtor will write up that offer the same day. Recently, many houses have been in a multiple-offer scenario. This is another trap to not get sucked into. After so much time vetting the house, it’s easy to be attached, especially if you find very favorable data (e.g., you can get rent higher than 1%). It’s not worth owning the house if you have to purchase it at a higher price than you’re comfortable at; it must be a business decision, purely based on the financials.

Keep an eye on listings daily or weekly to keep a pulse on the neighborhoods you’re interested in, evaluate the property condition, consider the 1% Rule and evaluate the detailed financial cash flow, don’t skip the home inspection nor should you ignore the results of it, and keep it a business (not emotional) decision.

401k/TSP Loans

mrsonedollarallowance3 Comments

Working for the Federal government, our 401k is called the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). We max out our contributions each year. As a means of bridging down payment gaps, we utilized a little-known option – the TSP loan.

Per TSP.gov, “When you take a loan, you borrow from your contributions to your TSP account. Your loan amount can’t exceed the amount of your own contributions and earnings from those contributions. Also, you cannot borrow from contributions or earnings you get from your agency or service.” There are two loan options: general purpose and real estate. There are different requirements to meet for each type of loan.

First, here are some items to consider in the decision-making. While these rules pertain specifically to the 401k program provided to Federal employees, TSP, your employer’s 401k service provider should have a similar program for taking a loan from your account and rules associated with paying that loan back.

  • You have to begin making loan payments immediately after your draw down. A general purpose loan must be repaid within 5 years, and a primary residence real estate loan must be repaid within 30 years but you have control over the amount of each payment, as long as the amortization keeps the repayment within the required period. 
  • You pay interest on the loan, which is set at the ‘G Fund’ rate. According to the TSP website, the interest rate is 0.875% as of 1/17/2021. This interest payment is paid into your TSP account.
  • There is a loan fee of $50. 
  • You must be currently employed by the government to take the loan, since repayment is processed through payroll deductions, and if separating from the government you must repay the loan in full within 60 days of separation.

The common talking point working against using a 401k loan is that you need to weigh the loss of compound growth on the balance of your TSP against what the loan will gain you. Many financial talking heads will warn you of using your retirement account for immediate, frivolous purchases. But, used appropriately and strategically, Mr. and Mrs. ODA fully believe that 401k loans can open up financial doors much earlier than through more “traditional” means. 

Our first loan was for our primary residence. While Mr. ODA was an excellent saver through college, he expected to buy a house for about half the cost of what a very basic house goes for in Northern Virginia. Our opportunity cost was private mortgage insurance (PMI); did we want to pay PMI (an added cost that a bank adds to your monthly loan payment to mitigate the risk if you don’t bring a 20% down payment to the house purchase) or take out TSP loans to make up the difference for our down payment? Taking out a loan was ‘out of the box’ and seemed controversial. However, paying PMI indefinitely and being subject to the bank’s decision on when PMI could be removed was more concerning. PMI is building the bank’s “pockets,” while the interest on a TSP loan is going back to your TSP account. 

We decided to each take a residential loan from our accounts. I took a $15,000 loan and Mr. ODA took a $25,000 loan. By taking a TSP loan, we were losing out on the earnings of the accrued balance, but the repayment to ourselves of the G-fund rate was a reasonable trade off. Plus, we could put any extra money towards the loan at any time, thereby increasing our TSP balances faster. 

My loan draw was 7/2/2012, and I had it paid off by 3/17/2015. We could have stretched the payment over the full 30 years to fully leverage our money, but at the time, owning rental properties wasn’t on our immediate radar. However, two incentives to pay a TSP loan off faster than a allowed amortization are 1) that you can only have one loan of each kind at a time, and 2) you can’t request a new loan within 60 days after you paid off a TSP loan. Then there’s that opportunity cost; we wanted to get our money back into our tax incentivized account as quickly as possible to get it working for us again. 

Since our experience was positive for these two loans, we kept this option on the table for future transactions. In 2016 and 2017, we purchased 9 rental properties using regular savings from our high savings rate lifestyle and the equity we were able to cash in from the sale of our first primary home. To cover the down payment of the last few purchases, Mr. ODA and I each took a general purpose loan of $50,000, which is the maximum amount for such type of loan. The loan rate at that time was 2.25%, which was a great lending rate back in 2017. We paid my loan off first, fairly aggressively using the cash flow from the rental properties we purchased, knowing that since I would be separating from the government once we had kids it had to be paid sooner than later. Mr. ODA has adjusted the repayment amount per pay check several times since 2017 to meet our cash flow needs. The loan was issued on 9/1/2017 and currently has a balance of $12,370. 

When looking at the opportunity cost comparison for the rental property purchases, we determined that the 4 ways we make money in real estate investing outweighed the likely (and what actually turned out to be very lucrative) gains of the stock market.

  1. Cash Flow – Profit from rent after all expenses are paid.
  2. Principal Pay Down – The amount the tenant essentially pays out of your mortgage payment that goes directly to the equity of the house.
  3. Appreciation – The increasing of property value based on the market.
  4. Tax Advantages – Being able to utilize the tax code in an advantageous fashion as a business owner. 

By carefully evaluating each property to ensure we had near-guarantees of all 4 of these methods working, we thought that the benefits of owning more rentals outweighed the loss of share ownership in our TSP accounts.