4335$ expenses per unit for 2011 - is this reasonable??

[TangoWhiskey]

I just crunched numbers and found the expenses per unit per year on a 40 year old 24 unit B- to B wood frame building with 97-98 % occupancy over the year added up to 4335$. I pay all utilities and the building is electric heat. Capital exp were about 535 $ per unit per month on top of this.



Is this high? The multi fam course and posts on this board point to 4k/unit/year where utilities are included.



The biggest area to trim would be the janitor who does a great job (500/month) and the live-in super/manager (775/month) who also does a very hands-on job and now that she's trained has basically turned this investment into a hands-off asset that reliably spits off 2-4K/month.



It feels like I should just be ok with this level and continue to focus on more acquisition and more capital raising/JV efforts rather than once again getting dragged into building management.



Thanks for any comments and feedback, and as always cheers to Thomas.



Tris

 

[Thomas Beyer]

yes high .. how much are utilities overall (cold water, hot water, sewer, heat, garbage, electricity) ? maybe $1500 to $1800 ?



property taxes are also high in some jurisdictions .. say over $1000/unit ?



details please !

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Thanks for the reply Thomas.



Details;



water and electric costs were 36344/year or 126.20 $ per unit per month. There are no other utility costs or garbage costs as they are incl in taxes of 21103 or 880/unit/yr. The water costs include a busy laundry of course. I don't water any lawns. I need to post sometime the actual water consumption figures per unit to get some comparisons.



The last 8 months since I got out of the hands-on mgmt monthly net returns are 3300$. Judging by what I read on the forum these kind of returns are great for a 40 yr old building owned less than 2 years although I haven't had any really big cap ex jobs yet like roof or parking lot so the sample size is small.



I could meter the units but I would have to invest heavily in maybe 50 new windows not to mention electrical upgrade costs of at least 36k, turnover and vacancy costs and pissing off the manager.



I recall reading in one of your posts (some of which I have printed into an informal binder of apt bldg wisdom) that you put utilities on tenants in 3 or 4 buildings and found it wasn't worth the hassle and the net returns were very low. I would rather focus on acquisition at this point - thoughts?