From the category archives:

Single Family Houses

2% Rule for SFH

August 23, 2008

Here’s another rule of thumb that’s popular with investors who focus on single family houses. And again, this is a good rule of thumb to use to perform a quick, first-pass financial analysis on an investment to determine whether it’s worth looking at further. The 2% rule states that, to make a good profit on [...]

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Finding Financing

July 21, 2008

Once I decided to pursue investing in single family houses more seriously, it became clear that I’d need a serious financing strategy. While I can afford to buy a few houses for cash and pay for all the rehab costs myself, if I’ll be holding those houses for any period of time before selling, the [...]

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50% Rule for SFH

July 16, 2008

The 50% rule is a rule of thumb to do a very-quick first-pass analysis of a single family investment (rental) property. The rule states that — on average — the total expenses associated with operating a SFH investment will be about 50% of the gross rents. The expenses included in the 50% are things like: [...]

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House Buying Philosophies

July 14, 2008

I’ve been working with a real estate agent the past couple days who continues to try to sell me a few overpriced duplexes. I’ve tried to explain to her several times my conservative buying philosophy, but it doesn’t really seem to be getting through to her. Today, I received an email trying to sell me [...]

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First Offer Dead?

July 11, 2008

It looks like Offer #1 probably isn’t going to close…here’s the latest… I got a call from the agent/wholesaler who is negotiating this offer on my behalf, saying that the bank’s agent has multiple offers and wants a best/final offer from us (this may or may not be true, who knows); I *hate* the best/final [...]

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First Offer Questions

July 10, 2008

In yesterday’s post, I discussed the possible exit strategies — and the financial implications of each — for the property I made an offer on the other day. Because this is my first potential deal, I ran it by a bunch of other experienced investors who I knew would provide impartial advice on the deal. [...]

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First Offer Details

July 9, 2008

After getting feedback from some other knowledgeable RE folks, I’m not sure that my potential first deal is the right one to start with. While I’ll go into my hesitations on the deal (and the specific feedback I’ve gotten) in more detail in a subsequent post, I wanted to lay out my rationale for considering [...]

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My First SFH Offer

July 8, 2008

It’s crazy…I moved here with the intention that I would be focusing on buying apartment buildings, and after putting together a solid business plan, starting to make contacts with other investors, agents, lenders, etc, it looks like the first investment property I buy will be a single family house (SFH). Don’t get me wrong, I’m [...]

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SFH Investment Analysis (Part 4)

July 3, 2008

In yesterday’s post, I laid out a range of financial projections regarding the SFH Investment business I was considering funding and implementing. To recap, I developed two business and financial models, to help give an accurate range of financial expectations for this venture. At the low end, we assumed very conservative business growth, part-time efforts, [...]

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SFH Investment Analysis (Part 3)

July 2, 2008

In some previous posts, I laid out a quick-and-dirty business and financial model for a real estate company that bought, rehabbed, and sold/rented single family homes full-time. My goal was to determine whether this could be a potentially lucrative undertaking, as my fiancee would love to get into the “house flipping” game (she’d be happy [...]

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