Out-of-state investing · with Heather Marchant
Phones out
Your phone is about to price a house on your street and play along with every deal. Keep it next to you.
Where I live · Salt Lake County, Utah
Rent and taxes are estimates for a house this size where I live. Utah taxes a rental on its full value and a house you live in on 55% of it, so the tax line on a rental here is nearly double.
I look at other people's rental deals for a living. I pass on most of them.
Nothing about the asset changed. A bank funding most of it, a tenant covering the note. What changed is that the place you happen to live stopped being a place where that arithmetic works.
Same wallet. Same week
One house. $135,000 down. Minus $8,988 for the year, which is a 6.7% loss before anything breaks.
Two houses. $135,480 down. Plus $14,076 for the year, which is 10.4%.
Same money, same month, same person. A swing of $1,922 every month, and the only thing that changed is the zip code.
Your phone just ran the same thing with your down payment.
Why it's worth chasing at all
A note pays you one way. A dividend stock pays two. This one pays four at the same time, and a bank will fund 80% of it. Nobody lends you 80% to buy a stock.
Most people count the first one and stop.
How I look at every deal
Everything a seller tells you is a claim. These are the three places you check.
Next: four real deals that crossed my desk. Buy it, or pass? Same money on all four: 20% down, interest only. Three of them die, one at each filter.
House A · buy it, or pass?
House A
361 Bay Meadows Dr, Aiken, SC
So I passed. Paper doesn't know how long the last one took to rent.
House B · buy it, or pass?
House B
6317 Lemongrass Dr, Columbus, GA
A range built from dollars per square foot. Nobody had rented this house, or one like it.
One 2,002 sq ft 3/2 gets $1,500. Ours is 1,410. Cash flow goes +$154 to −$46.
A builder I've used for years told me "rents in the $2,050 to $2,150 range." Nobody signs a range.
House C · buy it, or pass?
House C
Every one of them cost somebody money before I learned to ask it. This house died on a question nobody asked.
1733 NE 28th St, Renton, WA
Positive from day one.
One meter. The owner pays water, sewer, gas and electric for both units. About $420 a month.
And that $4,461 was Zillow's guess, not a lease. The rental across the street gets $3,708.
Filter three · the whole list
The one nobody thought to ask is the one that costs you.
House D · last one · buy it, or pass?
House D · through all three
3308 S 23rd St, Chickasha, OK · +$687 a month
Boring is what survives three filters.
The part everybody worries about
The arithmetic is the easy part. What people actually ask me is who turns the key, who takes the call at midnight, and who is standing there when I am not.
I never stood in front of my first rental. Eight years, and the team did the standing.
Tap any seat on your phone to see what that person does for you.
How you pay for it
Flexibility is the point. Brendan prices every one of these, and he'll run yours.
The question everybody is waiting to ask
You never write me a check.
If you want me to do this part
Same three filters. I just run them before you ever see the house.
One thing to take with you
Ask me anything on your phone. I answer every one.
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