One of my goals with Rental Income Advisors is to be as transparent and data-driven as possible with my readers and my coaching clients. I think the best way to build confidence in a new investor is to actually show the numbers, to prove that rental property investing really does work as advertised.

For those reasons, I publish a monthly report on my portfolio’s performance. I hope that this chronological history paints a clear picture of what it’s like to be a remote landlord. It’s also a great exercise for me to be sure I’m staying plugged in to all my numbers.

Here is the update for March 2022. You can also check out all my previous monthly reports.

Property Overview

Maintained full occupancy this month, though I have two turns coming up at Property #14 and Property #16. Both tenants gave their notice to vacate at the end of April and May, respectively. It’s never great when tenants vacate — avoiding turns is generally a good strategy — but it’s still better when tenants vacate “the normal way” and give proper notice, because it’s much more likely they’ll leave the property in good shape. We shall see…

Meanwhile, the eviction at Property #9 is still awaiting a court date.

Rents

Collections again looked pretty similar to the last few months: I still have a non-paying tenant at Property #9, a shortfall that is being somewhat offset by month-to-month fees.

I had several more tenants renew their leases with rent increases, pushing up my total monthly rent charged another $96 over last month.

Expenses

The main story here is that expenses ran quite high this month due to maintenance & repairs.

Mortgage: I received a $160 escrow refund check on one of my properties, which pushed my mortgage expense down slightly from where it would otherwise have been.
Maintenance & Repairs: I had a roof repair for ~$2K this month, just as I did in February. Another $2K+ of expense was incurred to clean up fallen trees at three properties after some intense windstorms came through. (Tree work is a surprisingly expensive aspect of rental properties, but luckily, there was no damage to the homes.) The rest were more typical expenses for HVAC, plumbing, and occupied home inspections.
Property Taxes: One of my properties somehow had an overdue bill for “weeds” from the local tax office — this generally means a fine for not cutting the grass. This was probably owed by the previous owner, and was somehow missed by the title company prior to closing. It was too much trouble to fight it over $95, so I just paid it.

The Bottom Line

My financial model currently projects my Memphis portfolio to generate $6,396 of positive cash flow in an average month. (This is a bit higher than last month because of increased renewal rates at a few properties.) This month, the positive cash flow was $4,018, about $2,400 below target. This miss was mostly due to the high cost of repairs this month, as well as the tenant under eviction.

Finally, here’s the running tally and graph I update each month. The dotted blue line indicates my projected average monthly cash flow for my portfolio in each given month. March was below the line, and my YTD totals are now lower than projected as well:

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About the Author

Hi, I’m Eric! I used cash-flowing rental properties to leave my corporate career at age 39. I started Rental Income Advisors in 2020 to help other people achieve their own goals through real estate investing.

My blog focuses on learning & education for new investors, and I make numerous tools & resources available for free, including my industry-leading Rental Property Analyzer.

I also now serve as a coach to dozens of private clients starting their own journeys investing in rental properties, and have helped my clients buy millions of dollars (and counting) in real estate. To chat with me about coaching, schedule a free initial consultation.