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Comment by throwaway088 | Hacker News Reader

So, about renting, I bought a single family home for $500k in bay area. It now is worth $1M. Gets me rent before expenses of $40000. So far, I have spent about $5k per year on. Repairs etc. So effectively, I make about $20k after taxes, repairs, mortgage interest etc. Overall, I spent $350k by way of downpayment, mortage interest payment, etc. No major tenant issues.

Hence, I would peg my return on investment of 5% if I do not account for increase in price of the house. If I do, it would be around 10% which is what FAANG has been giving me, with much less hassles.

Decide for yourselves if this is passive enough for you.

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Over the lifespan of owning the building, say a few decades, you can expect:

1. Rare but highly expensive major expenses like a new roof, new heating system, etc. It's like a tail risk- you don't pay for it most years, but when it comes up, it costs a lot.

2. Required renovations- just to stay at your current level of quality. I.e. let's say you rent to normal middle class tenants now. In 10-15 years, you'll need to install a new kitchen, new bathroom, overall maintenance- just to stay at a middle class level. The building is constantly depreciating! So unless you intend to move economically downscale and rent to lower income folks, to stay 'middle class' you'll need to refresh the building every decade or two. No one wants an ancient kitchen, a decrepit bathroom from three presidents ago, etc.

So you have to factor those two major expenses into your total rate of return over the decades. How much is a new roof, a new heating system, that new kitchen, that new bathroom.... You may not see these expenses every year, so you don't feel like they count, but over the decades they will.

Source, am actually familiar with the true rate of return for properties over a long enough time span to judge. A 1-3 year snapshot isn't sufficient!

Thanks. This is great insight and one that is missing from most online discussions. I am really terrified of this situation because it will bring down my ROI. Also, I dont like to deal with contractors and related headaches. We will see how it pans out.

Most folks I know that purchase properties are not in it for cashflow. Breaking even is enough. The goal is to purchase the next one with a downpayment against existing equity. The deck of cards falls apart if the property market corrects significantly but how is that different than everything else happening in this economy.

For one it's an extremely capital intensive operation for most folks. In fact buying a property is usually many times their net worth. Which means now one is not allowed to make mistakes, because losing means not only going to zero, but going underwater many times over what the cashflow can cover.

This argument falls apart once a property is a fraction of someone's net worth, but it's rarely the case.

Source, am actually familiar with the true rate of return for properties over a long enough time span to judge.

And what is it?

> Source, am actually familiar with the true rate of return for properties over a long enough time span to judge.

What is it? 7% 11%? Do you factor in financing leverage when you make the tenant pay the principal to your mortgage (if any)?

1-4%? At first you are just paying almost 66% or more interest and mostly not the mortgage principal, here is an amortization calendar https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/amortization-...

If you want leverage, you can get vastly more leverage for risky stock market trades (I am not advocating for doing that, I just think it's odd when real estate proponents talk about 'leverage' as if it's unique to buying a building)

FWIW, your returns are likely significantly above the 5% mark you're referencing. You haven't factored in the unrealized gain of 500k, which would significantly change your returns. All in all, you've got a cash flow positive real estate asset who's valuation has doubled. Unless you purchased 15 years ago, you're likely looking at returns in the mid twenties.

My advice; learn how to actually put together a DCF model and get some real insight into your returns.

EDIT: I realized that my last statement might come off a bit condescending, but that wasn't my intention. Fundamentally, evaluating Real Estate returns is significantly more complex than other investments, such as holding stocks, ETFs, or Bonds. A Distributed Cash Flow (DCF) model will help you gain some understanding that will likely help you to make better decisions about your existing investment and make a more educated plan for the future (e.g. upcoming maintenance, when to exit at what price). You don't have to build a complex model, but even a simple one can help. There's plenty of resources out there, and you don't need much more than Excel to build one.

Source: formerly employed at a national REIT

Pretty sure that’s Discounted Cash Flow

It is. I typed too fast and can't edit now

And that can quickly disappear for those who end up with tenants that don't pay and can't be evicted.

That's my fear. But can you tell me in what situations I cannot evict my tenants. (Honest question).

COVID?

Most states have eviction moratoriums until 6/30 right now due to the pandemic.

Got it. Thx

Even when you can evict your tenants, it can take a long time, since you have to go to court. Had a friend have a property get absolutely destroyed by tenants that took a while to evict - 10s of thousands of dollars of damages. Of course, you could sue to recover your losses but these sort of tenants are usually an empty bag - you can't collect money they dont have and a small security deposit wont cover much. These situations are uncommon, but hardly unheard of.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-eviction-process...

Right now? CA still has an eviction moratorium going. If your tenants stopped paying rent you’d just have to bank roll it until it ends and you evict them.

If he can handle the cash flow, he'll be fine. The government printed enough money to pay him in the end.

In hindsight, was it worth it compared to just investing all that money into the S&P500?

I think that's his point; that 5% returns aren't actually that great.

Well, 10% is great, and he's diversified. I don't think it's that cut and dry.

Diversity is useful though. Stocks have crashed in the past, and they will in the future. As has real estate and every other investment. You thus need a backup plan in case your investment fails. I make no attempt to predict WHEN these crashes will happen, or how big they will be.

A single property is not diversification, if anything it further concentrates your money into a single asset.

That depends on the size of your other investments. If the property is worth $100,000 and your total assets are $1,000,000 with the rest in stocks, that one property is a reasonable level of diversification. If you already have a house worth $500,000 then taking money out of stocks to buy the rental is a bad investment. The above are but two very simplified examples. You need to figure out what is correct for your situation though - there is no one size fits all.

It is a single investment that is government-subsidized with loan-interest subsidies, that you can live in, that also people tend to have great emotional attachment to an unhealthy extent.

Home loans at least in the United States taken out at usually 5x leverage which would never fly for index funds but is ok for some reason for buying a home, even though you could become unable to pay the mortgage in which case the bank has to spend money foreclosing and selling it.

What people tend look at when they consider diversity doesn't work. The standard approach is to look for asset classes with uncorrelated returns. The problem that happens is most asset classes become correlated in a downturn. Look at what happened a year ago. If you had a split between ETFs, REITs and some crypto currency none of those investments would have been doing well.

>The problem that happens is most asset classes become correlated in a downturn.

I tend to think it's not worth it to try to hedge against that unless know you're going to need hard cash for a specific purpose during a recession, like meeting payroll in your own company.

My ide of diversifying is to hedge against industry-specific risks like space launches if Kessler syndrom hits, internal combustion tech if the ICE car ban becomes reality, real estate if the Detroit scenario happens, etc.

Yep. You are right. One thing that it helped me with is pickup a few managerial skills and have a nice diversion from day to day software stuff.

He stated 5% without accounting for the 100% price appreciation in the actual real estate. So the real rate of return is actually much better!

In hindsight not investing in a FAANG was a huge mistake.

What about depreciation and lowering your taxable income?

My tax advisor said that for our income levels, it will not decrease or increase any tax brackets.

Regardless of income, you can defer depreciation to a future tax year.

If you put only 20% down to buy it, that's 100k. So 20k/year is 20% returns, right?

Over the years, I got cold feet and paid off somenof the principal. Thats why I said overall I spent $350k so far

How did you spend $350k in down payment, mortgage interest on a $500k house?

Do you have a mortgage on it still? I don’t see that in your math. And what about the opportunity cost of your down payment?

Huh? FAANG has give much more than 10% returns...

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