Evaluating your Real Estate Investment for Cash Flow, Potential Appreciation and Liquidity

by Julie Broad & Dave Peniuk

How many properties can you afford if each one costs you $400/month?

To buy, or not to buy that real estate investment?

You have found your perfectly located property and are convinced it meets your goals. How do you know whether you should buy it? What if the rent is not enough to cover all of the expenses?

Many of the get rich quick books like Robert Allen's Multiple Streams of Income or Russ Whitney's no money down real estate courses are quick to focus on monthly cashflow. They preach that you must buy properties where the rent is high enough to cover mortgage, expenses and profit. We don't disagree, but just as we have in the last three editions, we want to take you back to your goals before you rule out the ones that don't have good cash flow.

When we moved to Toronto almost five years ago we bought a small condo in North York. Rents were higher than a mortgage, and we thought we would live there for awhile and rent it out. That is exactly what we did, but it costs us almost $400/month because the rent doesn't cover the maintenance fees. Why haven't we sold it? Right now, it still works for our goals.

In an ideal world you would find a real estate investment in a location that is right for you (as discussed last month) that will give you:

1. Positive cash flow each month (you are taking in more money from rent than you are paying out in mortgage and expenses) 
2. High potential for appreciation over a five to ten year term (or sooner!) 
3. High level of liquidity (in other words, everything about the property is desirable and it wouldn't be hard to sell in a hot or cold market). 

Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world and you will likely have to prioritize which ones you want based on what your short and long term goals are.*

Cash Flow

One of the most common methods of evaluating a purchase in commercial and residential real estate investment is cash flow. In commercial real estate you will often here everyone talk about the cap rates. In residential real estate a common one is the gross rent multiplier (GRM). To calculate GRM:

  * Estimated (or known) rent x 12 months = Annual Rent
  * Asking price (or what you plan to pay for it)
  * GRM = Asking Price / Annual Rent.

For example, if your monthly rent is $1,000, and the asking price is $100,000 your GRM is:

$100,000 / $12,000 = 8.33.

The basic rule of thumb is that you need a GRM of 10 or less to have decent cashflow. This is based on the assumption that your operating expenses are less than 40% of your monthly rent. Operating expenses include your property manager, taxes, insurance, and maintenance and repairs. It also assumes that your financing costs do not exceed 60% of your monthly rental income.

Just to give you an idea of expenses, our properties average about 37% of our rental income each month for operating expenses.

Once you narrow down your list of potential investment properties, contact the listing realtor and obtain an income and expense sheet for the property or ask for actual receipts to determine the true expenses and possible rent of each property. Now, you will be more informed whether to continue looking at this property on a cashflow basis or you should move on.

If your goal is to find properties that will provide you monthly income, then you will need to focus on this method of evaluation. The two other considerations (appreciation and liquidity) should be less of a concern. If you are holding properties for the long term, and looking for ones that are less likely to cause you problems with tenants or repairs, then you are likely also going to be factoring in the other two evaluation criteria.

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