This matches my experience in my high COL area. 1% would be way too much here.
I’ve been talking to various contractors and it seems like it would be a bargain to get a kitchen done for under 60K…
Cabinets alone cost $15k on the low end.
I wonder if cars should be counted in as the cost to own a home in podunk. In the city, you can get by with 0-1 cars for a family, in the burbs it looks like you need at least 2.
Depends on the size of the kitchen, but $15k on the low end seems really inflated, unless there’s something weird about your kitchen that requires custom boxes. I like J&K cabinets if you can find them, they are pretty affordable. I used them in a master bath remodel, did an 11’ vanity with solid maple raised panel doors, plywood boxes, and soft close hardware, and it was $1,500 with tax.
For a rental house, I suspect most would be looking at off-the-shelf stuff from a big box store.
Yeah it was the low end during our search process, some brands went all the way up to 60K and our kitchen is on the small end. Lumber shortage is real
My experience is that you get what you pay for. Yes perhaps cheap mdf cabinets for a small condo kitchen can be had for $1500, but higher end solid wood cabinets for a kitchen in a 4 bedroom home might cost quite a bit more. Countertops can cost $1000 for cheap laminate or 10,000 for quartz. The amount you spend might also affect durability. Go cheap and you are redoing it all in 12 years. Go quality and maybe you get 20 or even 25 years.
Yeah, at least to an extent. But for most kitchens, $15k isn’t on the low end.
The googles tell me this about kitchen remodels
HomeAdvisor puts the average kitchen remodel price in the $12,567 to $34,962 range . A small kitchen remodel can cost as little as $4,000 and a lavish remodel can cost as much as $50,000+.
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The middle of just labor + design for most companies I contacted start at 35K 
Not even materials!
On what size home or condo, though?
I would imagine there is a lot of variance depending on the size and scope of the project and the area of country you live in.
approximately 140 sq foot kitchen condo
We’re gonna need to open up our borders to let more immigrants in or else I’m gonna go crazy
That sounds like a hefty price tag, but it supports my assertion that 1% of the unit price is an insufficient amount for long term maintenance.
My annual assessment is about 2.5%. Oh are we including taxes in this? This includes parking btw which I own.
No, no taxes in this part of the expense estimate. They are separate and readily available. We are just talking about the long term cost of maintenance. Maybe we should start a real estate/landlordship thread.
What are the costs of being a landlord that the rent is supposed to cover, and what kind of cash flow does it provide, if any?
Let’s say I bought a 6 unit building for 1.2M. That’s 200k per unit. I put 30% downpayment, so I mortgage 840,000 at 3.5% on a 20 year term.
Is is realistic to pay a little higher for a commercial real estate loan than I would pay for a primary house mortgage? A little googling leads me to believe that an mortgage rate on a commercial apartment building loan will be about 1% higher than I could get on a conforming mortgage loan.
Mortgage payment is $4,872. Taxes at 1.75% of total building value, which is 1,750 per month. Property Insurance I will guess is 2400/year or 200/mo. And long term maintenance costs are 1.25%/year or 1,250 per month for a total monthly cost of 8,072.
So my break even on cash flow depends on me being able to charge a monthly rent of about 1/150 of the unit value (200,000 * 1/150 roughly 1,340 per month per unit), assuming I maintain 100% occupancy and I get my rent check 100% of the time from the renters. If I need to accrue for occasion vacancy or occasional nonpayments, then I need to charge more rent.
If I must lower rent amounts because of market conditions to 1/160th or 1/180th of unit price, I become cash flow negative. I could influence the cash flow being positive or negative by putting a larger or smaller downplayment (or adjust the term). Of course, as time marches on the rents adjust upward and cash flow improves, and one day the mortgage is paid in full and then cash flow is great. But at some point down the road there’s gonna be the big expenses of bathrooms, kitchens, carpeting, roofing, and HVAC.
Yeah, don’t remodel during a shipping crisis 
too bad, I don’t have a place to live and make babies during my prime baby making years
Just crossed over $1.5M including the house & $1.25M excluding in the same week, guess you know how much equity I have in my house…
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tree fiddy
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