It is simple to comprehend why many aspire to retire with a portfolio of rental homes. The renters cover the costs, while the retiree retains the earnings. Given the number of people who have amassed generational wealth through real estate, it is a fair goal for anybody seeking financial stability.
Unless the rent is astronomically high and your costs are astronomically low, a single rental property usually isn’t enough to support retirement. Therefore, the question is how many rental properties are required to retire early.
It is a hard question with no one solution. Each retiree’s financial condition is unique, as is the return an investor might anticipate from a particular rental property.
Discovering the Formula Is the Easy Part
Each individual’s retirement costs are unique, and each property will provide a different rental income; nevertheless, a universal formula can help you determine the optimal number of properties. Simply divide the monthly revenue you require by the cash flow generated by each property.
For instance, if you want $2,000 every month in retirement, you would require four properties that yield $500 each month.
This computation is straightforward on paper, but it ignores many real-world complications. In all circumstances, however, the calculation establishes the desired retirement age and monthly expenses.
When do you plan to retire, and what is your monthly income objective?
Consequently, to T. Rowe Price, most retirees spend less, their tax burden often decreases, and they are no longer required to save a percentage of their income in a retirement plan. Therefore, the company recommends aiming for 75% of your present salary in retirement. If you earned $100,000 over your working years, you should aim to retire with $75,000.
However, early retirement complicates your financial concerns. For example, if you retire at 55:
- You will be required to pay for private health insurance for ten years until you turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.
- You must wait seven years before becoming eligible for Social Security at age 62.
As opposed to 17 years, if you had waited until your full retirement age of 67, you would have had more years to catch up on your 401(k) or IRA contributions.
If you retire early, you are more likely to pay off a mortgage or sponsor a child’s college tuition. On the other hand, you may have annuities, dividend stocks, or other passive income sources that lower the amount of money you require from your rental properties.
How Much Profit Does an Investment Property Generate?
Avoid the typical error of overestimating how much profit you’ll earn from the rent you charge before performing your computations.
According to Morris Invest, you should budget 40% of your rental revenue for expenditures such as insurance, property taxes, vacancies, and property management. However, do not assume you will receive the remaining 60%.
It’s important to note that the government taxes your profit separately from the property taxes you’ve already paid. If you don’t own the property outright, you must continue making monthly mortgage payments. For instance:
If you charge your tenant $2,000 per month, your annual income will be $24,000.
40%, or $9,600, will be deducted for expenditures, leaving you with $14,400 yearly or $1,200 monthly.
If your monthly mortgage payment is $500, you will have a monthly profit of $700; however, these are pretax earnings.
In the preceding illustration, the retiree with a $100,000 salary who intended to live on $75,000 would require $6,250 per month.
Based on this scenario, the retiree would require nine rental properties to retire early. In 12 years, however, after reaching full retirement age, the inclusion of Social Security and Medicare might enable the retiree to sell one of the nine homes, live off the income from the eight remaining properties, and invest the proceeds from the sale. During those twelve years, if your property’s value appreciates, you may be able to pay off some or all of your mortgage.
Determine the Property’s ROI Before Investing
Those who purchase rental homes with unreasonable earnings expectations are setting themselves up for retirement failure. The challenge is to reduce the numbers to your return on investment (ROI). ROI is the gain on an investment less the investment’s cost. After all expenditures and taxes are deducted, you can only forecast how much money you’ll keep.
The process begins with a cash flow statement. For a $100,000 purchase price and a $25,000 down payment, Stessa, which is part of the Roofstock network, offers the following example:
Gross rental revenue forecast: $900
Vacancy reduction: 5%, or $45
$855 Effective gross income
5 percent, or $45
Property administration: 8%, or $72
$180 in additional fees, including property tax, insurance, and HOA
principle and interest on a mortgage: $320
Monthly projected pretax profit: $238
It is vital to understand that this is the simplest version of a cash flow statement and omits several dangers and other factors. Stessa and several industry experts recommend adopting a pro forma income statement, which employs hypothetical data and assumptions about future values to precisely forecast your property’s probable performance.
A real estate expert specializing in real estate as a retirement plan is the best investment you can make if you want to retire on rental income.