If Your Rental Property Is Doing THIS, You Should Sell It (Rookie Reply)
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Today, we're tackling the question of when it's time to sell your investment property. We'll explore the clear signals that might be telling you it's time to cash out and move on. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed with maintenance issues, seeing shifting market conditions, or you just really need to level up how you analyze your investment properties, this episode will give you the clarity you need to make that tough decision. I'm Ashley Kerr. And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast.

Today we are doing a rookie reply episode and we have our first question. So this question is, I bought my first duplex in December 2024. I bought this turnkey because I wanted to have a stable start.

I still invested $35,000 into updates and renovations. I'm thinking about the next property and strategy. There will still be money left for a conventional purchase with 20% to 25% down, again, a turnkey property. But I've also been thinking about doing a BRRRR. I feel like I'm not experienced enough to start this strategy yet.

What do other rookie investors do? When did you start doing BRRRRs? Obviously, we know the positive aspects, but can people share all the negative aspects of it? So first of all, to kind of give some promise to this question, a BRRRR is when you buy your property,

You rehab the property, you rent out the property, and then you refinance, pull your money back out or at least some of it. And then you repeat the process and use that money again to go ahead and do another BRRRR.

So the difference here with this question is that this person has experience doing a turnkey property where you don't need any kind of, you know, rehab experience. The property is ready to go. Sometimes there's property management in place. One of the companies that does this is Rent2Retirement.com.

And they provide you with a property, show you how to analyze it. They show you what the market analysis is, basically gives you all the information and the property is ready to go. They'll place a tenant for you if there's not already one in place. And then you have the option to use them for property management too. So that's kind of the turnkey model.

So the BRRRR model is you're buying a property that needs to be fixed up. It's not turnkey. It's not ready to be rented. And this is where you get a value add. So the difference with turnkey is

And, you know, finding a fixer upper is that there is some value that you can add by fixing the property up. And usually there's going to be a better return on a BRRRR if you do it correctly and run your numbers correctly than a turnkey because you're putting more work into the BRRRR strategy by actually doing the rehab instead of buying a property that's already done up and ready to go.

So this question is, can a rookie investor do a BRRRR and how do you actually start? So Tony...

What would be your advice to this person? Yeah. I mean, so, you know, when to do a burst, they do know the turnkey. I think first, actually, and you did a great job, I think defining the differences between these two kind of strategies, but I just want to talk about the pros and cons of turnkey because honestly we don't talk about turnkey probably enough on the podcast, but it is really a viable option for a lot of people who are looking to get started because the, the pros of turnkey,

of turnkey or really that it's easier. It's like imagine going to Zillow, but instead of seeing properties that are empty, you're finding properties that are fully leased up with tenants inside that are cash flowing. So there's a definite ease of use when you go turnkey because as you said, the turnkey provider, they've already done all the work of finding the deal, doing the renovations, getting the tenant placed, et cetera, et cetera. You're getting a fully completed product. The other pro of turnkey is the speed component.

You can go on to most large turnkey providers. Like if you go to like rent to retirement, you can go shop their entire inventory of turnkey properties right now. And you could go back next month and buy another one and go back next month and buy another one. Like they have the volume to consistently fill your portfolio with new properties. So if your goal is I want the easiest path,

with the easiest ability to scale, then Turnkey does a phenomenal job of doing that, right? The ease and the speed. I think the cons of Turnkey are kind of what you alluded to before. When you burr a property, you're kind of going through that process yourself of creating that value. But when you buy Turnkey, they've basically did the burr already and they're selling you that finished product. So you do miss out on some of that value creation, on some of that value add.

And then the other piece is that you can't necessarily recycle your money. And with a traditional BRRRR, the idea is that you can get back through your refinance

either all or at least a good portion of the capital you invested into that deal. So you can then go redeploy that capital into the next deal with a turnkey property. You're putting down, you know, 15, 20, 25, 30%, whatever it may be. And because there is no value add opportunity, that money is just going to sit in that property. So when I, when I kind of think about

pros and cons of turnkey. That's what comes to mind for me. Anything that I might've missed there, Ashley? I think the other thing is just to like give a con besides just the, you know, not as great of a return of turnkey is that with a burr, you have control over the rehab where a turnkey you don't. So you're getting the finished product, whether it's been, you know, a good remodel or a bad remodel, you really don't know. So it's highly recommended. You have, you know, an inspection done on the property to make sure it was done correctly. Yeah.

Then the same with a BRRRR, like that also can be a con of being involved in the rehab that maybe you don't have any idea what you're doing and that can take you so much longer to actually get it to a finished product. So one of the things that I want to discuss here is like your time value for money. Okay, so even though you could get a better return for doing a rehab on a property and doing the BRRRR,

How much is your time worth? Because it is going to take more energy and effort, like Tony said, than it would be a turnkey. A turnkey is easier to purchase. And does that actually add up to be the same amount, to be more, to be less? So really think about that as to how much time do you actually have to be involved in managing a construction project, finding contractors, all of those things, placing a tenant in place, um,

Or do you have the team already built? Do you have a good contractor? Do you have a property manager? Do you have a leasing agent? So those are all things to think about too, because sometimes it's not worth going after the better return because it's going to be more work and it's going to take up more of your time. And maybe in your life right now, that's not something that you can take on.

So we actually just interviewed someone who was working on, you know, their nine to five job. And then they went every night and worked all night long at their property that they were doing. And he said how he had gained over 45 pounds. He was having heart problems because it wasn't, you know, the healthy thing, but like that was getting him to his goal. So yeah,

Definitely think about more than what's the greatest return. Think about the path to get there and what's actually better for you too. Yeah. You made a really good point too about like not knowing the quality of the rehab, but just want one other comment to you because you mentioned that like the time piece, um,

I think even beyond the time, it's just like, do you even want to, like, do you have the desire to go out there and manage contractors and do all those things? Because say maybe you do have the time, you do have the ability, but just in your heart of hearts, you don't like the idea of actually managing contractors and doing rehabs. Then maybe, uh,

the bird strategy isn't the right strategy for you. So it's the time, it's the ability, but it's also the desire component that we got to consider. And then going back to the point you made too, actually, about like, depending on which turnkey provider you purchase from, you really don't know what you're stepping into. And this person who asked the question, they did make a comment that I thought was kind of interesting, but they said that they invested an additional $35,000 in

into updates and renovations after buying a turnkey. And to me, that seems a little like counterintuitive. Like if it's turnkey, it means that, you know, on day one, the key is ready to turn and we don't need to do anything else. It seems like this, at least this initial turnkey product, maybe not,

maybe wasn't like an actual true turnkey if you need to invest into the 35,000. So just something else to consider that maybe the next time you do it, either vetting the property a little bit further or maybe picking a different turnkey provider. But I think going back to like the other part of the question, right? Because we talked a little bit about the difference between current turnkey and BRRRR, but the kind of big part of this question was, how do you know when you're experienced enough to start a BRRRR? And I don't know if there's like a magic trick

thing you have to do before you're qualified enough to do a burr. Like my very first deal was a burr. Um, actually I believe yours was too, right? Your first deal was a rehab property as well, right? Yeah. Very small rehab, just flooring cabinets, very minimal. But still, right. We, we, we, we rehabbed properties as our very first deal and there was no

you know, thing we had to do to make us feel qualified to do that. I think what's more important than saying, you know, like, like at what point am I ready? I think the bigger question to ask is how good of a team do I have? How good of a deal do I have? And if you've got a really killer deal, if you've got a really killer contracting and GC team, I think those are the elements that would say, okay, now I'm ready to step into doing a burr. Now I probably wouldn't do something that's like, you know,

taking it down to the studs on your first burr. But like Ashley said, if you're doing like a light cosmetic or maybe like a medium type renovation, which is what I did for my first one, it does feel like a good starting spot assuming you have the right support mechanisms in place. We're going to take a quick ad break, but when we come back, we're going to figure out if maybe the best solution to your investment property is actually selling it. We'll be right back.

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A bit worried. I live in one of the fastest growing cities in America and purchased a duplex in 2022. Tony, real quick, before we go on, do you have any guests as to what this city is? Fastest growing city in America? I have no idea. I want to say probably maybe like Columbus, Ohio, if I had to guess somewhere. Yeah, they don't tell us. So we'll never know. But maybe if this is your question and you know that you want to leave it in the comments on YouTube, we'd love to know which fastest growing city you're talking about.

But they purchased a duplex in 2022. I would say it's in a C area, but it is just close to downtown. And the area has been changing for the better over the last few years with new homes going up and a lot of renovations to existing homes. I purchased this property for the long-term appreciation, knowing it wouldn't cashflow for a few years and it had already been rehabbed before I purchased it.

The reason as to why I'm concerned is that according to online estimates, it has only appreciated from the purchase price of $321,000 to about $350,000. Although, yes, this is an estimated $29,000 increase, rents seem to be slowing down and I've been having to make a lot of unexpected repairs without having the cash flow for it.

I'm wondering how much longer I should wait to see what's going on before deciding to sell. If it wasn't for the issues I'm having with it, I wouldn't consider selling. But getting tenants in this area has been difficult. Deciding if I should wait till the value is up around $400,000 so that I could at least net $60,000 to $70,000 from the sale to put that in a better property in a better area.

Am I overreacting? Am I being impatient? Yes, I'm in it for the long game. However, financially, it's screwing me over a bit on a month-to-month basis, and I've had to accumulate almost $20,000 in debt to make repairs since purchasing. Okay, so a lot to unpack here, but Tony, I think we should go back up to the top here. And there was something here that

caught my eye that I wanted to address as far as they made the purchase knowing that they wouldn't have any cash flow and they were playing the appreciation play. Which famous real estate investor comes to mind using this strategy?

Oh, I don't know. Pop quiz here. Who is it? I don't know. David Green. I have heard him talk about how he will buy properties that break even knowing that they will appreciate. Okay. So maybe this person listened to David Green. So their plan is to hold on to this property for a few years. They purchased it in 2022. 2022 was also...

Where was the market at at 2022, Tony? Pretty good for the first part of it and then started to turn a little bit as we got to the back half of that year. Yeah, so they could have bought this at kind of the height of the after COVID market. And that's why they're not seeing much appreciation yet. So if anything, when looking at appreciation plays here,

I think if that is going to be your plan and you're not going to count on cash flow, that you have to have a lot of reserves in place, first of all, because this person had to go into $20,000 in debt to just cover repairs and maintenance that have come up on this property. So I think having a large amount in reserves, but also planning on holding onto it for more than three years.

Like at least having a plan. If you get to sell it in three years, like, yay, great. It appreciated faster than you actually planned for. But I think that you need to have a plan in place for it to appreciate longer than three years. I mean, if you would have bought in...

you know, 20 March of 2020, when COVID hit, I bought a single family home for $27,000 and I sold it six months later after fixing it up for like 160, that was perfect timing buying. And, you know, I did some rehab to it, but like, I never expected to get that much money for it, but I bought it at the perfect time and it was ready to sell at the height of COVID market. So unless you're

you know, you end up having that perfect timing that you may have to hold a property for longer than that amount of time, or at least plan for it. Yeah. Actually you bring up a good point. I think before we even get into like the, should you sell or should you not like, let's just talk about a few of these important things. So like the appreciation part, I agree. Like I think the timeframe of three years is kind of like a short window to, to really make that assessment. Um, I, I, I think like,

I did the math here really quickly, right? And they said that it increased by what? $29,000. Yeah. So over the, over those two years, that was a 9% increase. So you're averaging about four and a half percent appreciation each year, which is like pretty much right in line with where like the larger real estate market is moving. But also Tony, they said that they got this off. I don't know if it's said exactly, but as far as like online estimates, I think it's,

So like if your online estimate is Zillow, I would not go off that number. Your online estimate or your, you know, what you think the property should be, should be from pulling comparables. And it should be a number that you found yourself. So I'm not sure exactly what they mean by online estimate, but you should be looking at houses sold online.

in that market that are similar to yours that are comparable to actually get a better value instead of just looking at a Zillow estimate as to what your property is worth. Because I've had a Zillow estimate say that

My property was worth 500,000 when really it was a single family home worth 50,000. Someone just input the wrong zero in there. So I would not go off of that estimate at all. I think the other thing to consider too is like, how does this person see appreciation continuing in the future? Because they said that it's in a C area, but it's close to downtown areas getting better. So does that mean that appreciation could actually accelerate? Yeah.

you know, in year three and year four and year five. And it's like, you really don't know. But I think the one last thing, and you know, it's an important question to ask is like, what did you actually base your appreciation target on? Like what kind of appreciation were you expecting? Were you hoping to see it appreciate at, you know, those kind of 2021 levels when things were just going gangbusters? Cause if so, you were setting yourself up for failure to begin with, or what, like, what was your actual target?

And then I think the last thing too that I'd question, you know, if I could talk to this person was, instead of they bought it knowing that it wouldn't cashflow, but I'd want to know like,

When you made that decision, were you simply looking at your rent minus your mortgage payment, and that was basically zero? And you said, okay, cool, I'll break even. Did you not take into account vacancy, CapEx, maintenance repairs, et cetera? Because if so, then again, from the beginning, I think you were somewhat setting yourself up for failure by only looking at your principal interest taxes and insurance as your only expense. Here's something I've actually been thinking of on that.

strategy of since it is a lot harder now to find cash flow and banking on appreciation. This is what I'd want this person to do is sit down and run the numbers on, okay, you've already put in $20,000 of your own money on this property. So that's about a little less than, Tony, do the math for me, for over a course of a year, $20,000, that's a

And look at that as an investment. Okay. So what if you put that much money into the stock market every year? That's money out of sight, out of mind. What does that accumulate to like, look at your repairs and maintenance that you said, you know, there's issues with the property that keep coming up. What will it cost you over the next three more years to cover that?

How much are you coming out of pocket? So say that $20,000 and say over the next three years, another 20,000. So that's $40,000 that you're investing back into that property. If the property keeps appreciating at four and a half percent every single year, what does that property value end up being? And does it out beat the $40,000 you put into it?

Or is it going to be negative that you're putting in more than what it's worth? Because people put money into the stock market. People put money into investments where they're not getting any specific return at the moment. They wait. They wait for that. They reinvest their dividends or they're not getting any dividends. And they wait until that time they get to retirement to sell that stock or whatever it may be.

So think of it that way too, with that kind of mindset as to if you are investing that much money over the period of time and you choose that you have that extra money, so not going into any more debt, but you have that extra money to take and invest into that property to make it better, then

Is the property going to appreciate three more years down the road? Staying at that four and a half percent, be super conservative when estimating your appreciation. We have a new president. We don't know what could happen over the next four years with the market. Even if there wasn't a new president, we couldn't guess exactly what's going to happen over the next four years. But

I think that looking at it, kind of shifting your mentality as to is that a way that you could actually make it work? And maybe in this person's situation, but if there's somebody else listening that may be thinking, I want to go for the appreciation play and I want to, I'm just going to break even on cashflow. I can get a deal like that.

What do the numbers look like if you're investing, you know, a couple hundred dollars every month into the property or $20,000 a year into the property? And how does that actually pencil out in the long run? Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head of like, what kind of return can you expect to get looking forward? But I think the other part of that question that we have to answer is, well, what are you like? What are you going to do with that capital if you were to sell today? Yeah.

And do you believe that you can go out and maybe get a property in a, in a market that will appreciate better, you know, or are you just going to kind of put yourself into the exact same position, but now you've just gone through the hassle of selling this property and buying another one, you know? So you've got to ask yourself what, what the, what the use of those funds will be. And I think just, just like one last point too, on just like assessing the current property, the $20,000 in repairs, you didn't mention in this question, but like if there's a property manager in place, you know,

I would really, really go over a lot of those repairs where they find tooth comb. Uh, because depending on the property manager, I think, you know, most real estate investors have probably experienced at least once in their portfolio that sometimes the charges for some of these repairs are a little outrageous. Sometimes the, the, the necessity of these repairs aren't super high, but because the PM either maybe gets a commission or maybe it's their own property, um, uh, like, uh, uh,

maintenance company that they're sending their own folks out there to do these things. It's not the profit center for them. So for them, they want to do as many repairs as they possibly can. And they see this rookie investor with this property that maybe isn't in all that terrible condition, but they're new, they don't know any better. Now you're just, you know, you're an extra $20,000 in revenue for them each year. So I would really seriously consider re-evaluating those expenses to see if they're really necessary and if those prices are really reasonable. So here to...

Answer the question. This is what I'm going to say. I'm going to say, if you're going to continue going into debt for this property, you should sell it now and get out of it instead of continuously going into debt and adding more debt and more financial strain on yourself. I would, but first, before you decide to do that, I would get an opinion.

opinion from a real estate agent, I would pull comparables to see what the actual value of the property is if you sold now. And then I would see what it would cost for you to actually maintain that property for another year, another two years to hopefully gain more appreciation on the property and if it's worthwhile for you. But if you're going to go into more debt, I would say sell the property. Couldn't agree with you more actually. So well said. Okay. Rookies, we want to thank you so much for being here and listening to the pod

We want to hit 100,000 subscribers and we need your help. If you aren't already, please head over to our YouTube channel. You can go to youtube.com slash at real estate rookie and subscribe to our channel. We have to take one final ad break, but we'll be back with more after this.

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My husband and I bought our first investment property in 2022. It's four commercial units and two apartment units on one property. All of the units are managed by a management company, but major repairs come to us. We have since started a family and have decided the time it takes to maintain this real estate investment is not worth the time away from our little guy.

We've had it listed for sale for over a year with a commercial broker with little interest. It needs a new roof. We want it gone and aren't really interested in putting a bunch of money to replace a roof. So, Ashley, they're trying to get some advice on how to move a stagnant listing. Yeah.

Obviously, the environment that we're in right now, interest rates are a lot higher. It is definitely more of a buyer's market because there's just not as many people out there looking to purchase right now. So there's some headwinds you're going to face regardless. But I think before we even get into the question of how can you quickly sell this, I think the first question that I'd ask is, can you avoid selling this all together? So you talked about it to be managed by a property manager.

And ideally, if you have a PM, the time involvement from you should be relatively low. So I would question the effectiveness of this PM. If you still feel like you're spending so much time on this property that they decided from worth owning it anymore to me, it's like, okay, well, what is the PM doing as well? What are your thoughts? Well, the first thing I think is it's interesting is both of these questions asking about if they should sell, they both purchased in 2022. So I,

I thought that was, you know, kind of interesting, but with this property, it almost sounds like they just don't want to deal with it. So maybe they're not even having to deal with a lot. It's just like, they've already made up their mind. They don't want to deal with it. And even though the property, the property manager could still be managing, but there's still things that could come up. So if the property does have issues or does have problem tenants,

the property manager could still be reaching out to the owner as far as like, this is your property. Can we replace the roof? Can we spend this much? You know, most property management companies will set a limit as to how much they are allowed to spend without approval. So maybe there's a low limit set where they're having to constantly ask for

Maybe it's just that the property management company is over communicating by saying, hey, just, you know, this tenant isn't cleaning up their dog waste. We're sending out, you know, notices and they're just annoyed with these inconveniences. Maybe tenants aren't paying rents and annoyed with, you know, not having their rent received in a timely manner. So there could be a lot of issues that, you know, maybe aren't directly correlated with the property manager, but, you know,

There definitely still could be the fact that the property manager is not doing their job to take care of this and get rid of it. But also, if they're having to spend a lot of money on repairs and maintenance and upkeep of this property, that's what maybe they could mean is they just don't want to deal with it anymore because it's having to make money.

decisions and decision fatigue is a real thing. And that can come along with being a landlord too. Even with having a property manager, there's still decisions you're going to have to make as the asset manager of the property. Couldn't agree more. Actually, there's still, I think some level of oversight that's necessary. I think maybe even beyond the PM, I just wonder if there's things that,

that maybe you could do to make this more enjoyable for you? Could you hire maybe a part-time virtual assistant? Ash and I have both leveraged VAs in our business, and I know that's made a big difference for me in terms of the time involvement that I need when it comes to a lot of these smaller details.

Are your operations really dialed in in a way that you are kind of removed from that process? So I think before you really commit to selling, just reevaluate in the current state of that property and your operation to see are there any low-hanging fruit that we could potentially tackle?

to make this deal worthwhile to keep in our portfolio. Yeah, they did mention that even though they have a property manager, major repairs come to them. And then they said it's not worth the time away from their little one. So maybe they're, you know...

A contractor or something. So maybe they're actually doing those major repairs themselves. So maybe finding a contractor or handyman that can actually take that on. But then again, that may offset their cashflow a lot by them not doing the work on the property too. So that's definitely something to consider. Well, let's talk about actually selling now, right? I mean, they've had it listed for over a year, hasn't moved yet.

I think the thing that comes to mind for me first is like, is the broker actually doing their job, right? It's this commercial broker that you've brought on to sell this property, right?

Are they actually doing their job of going out there, pounding the pavement, trying to find buyers for this property? Does the listing look good? Do they have good professional photos? Is the description, are all the details accurate? What listing platforms do they have it on? Or distribution channels do they have it on? Are they doing all the things that a good broker would typically do? And the kind of

The yin to that yang is are you taking the advice of the broker? Have they told you, hey, if you really want to sell this thing, we should be doing X, Y, and Z? Because if they're giving you that feedback, but you're just not taking it, well, now the buck kind of stops with you. And you've got to kind of do some self-assessment to say, okay, well, how are we actually the obstacle to this property getting sold? I think, too, if there hasn't been any interest is –

maybe whenever your listing agreement is up, is we just had Aaliyah on the podcast. We just interviewed her. And she actually had a real estate agent that gave her a pitch as to like, this is why I can sell this property. Here's other properties I've sold in the area. Here's my buyer's list I have from the other properties that their offer wasn't accepted and things like that. So maybe going out and finding a new real estate agent, going to biggerpockets.com,

slash agent finder and, you know, doing some interviews of agents to see what they can actually bring to the table to help you move this property. Tony, as you said, like maybe is your, are you not doing the things your agent said? And like, I get it as far as like maybe a new roof would make it more attractive, but you just don't want to put the money in, but maybe that's something they could write into the listing agreement is that you're willing to,

you know, hold money and escrow for the roof pair, but leave it up to the person after they close to actually go and do the roof repair, something like that. You know, is there other, some kind of motivation? Um, is there any opportunity to, since it's commercial property, um,

Someone could purchase it, get a commercial loan, but you could also do seller financing of their down payment. So you'd get all the money from the loan proceeds, but you could do seller financing for their down payment. So that makes it way more attractive. Commercial lending will do that as long as the numbers still pencil out and the property can support a payment to you doing seller financing and a payment to

to the bank for the commercial loan. So that's maybe a strategy you can incorporate to sell this commercial property is offering a portion of seller financing. So a buyer has to bring less to the table. I think the last thing too is just the price. You know, like if you really want to move it, then maybe consider being a little bit more aggressive with your price drop.

Because usually most deals make sense in some number. We don't know what you bought it for, we don't know what it's listed for, so we're not sure how much room there is between those two numbers, like what you owe on it and what you can sell it for today. But if your goal is just to get out of it, and your goal isn't necessarily to make a bunch of money when you sell, then get it as low as you possibly can without you having to actually come out of pocket to get rid of the deal.

And sometimes if you really want to get rid of something, you know, talk from a guy who's gone through this experience before. Sometimes you might need to write a check at closing to get out of a deal that maybe isn't working the way that you wanted it to. So just know that the price is one lever that tends to have a lot of influence on how quickly a property actually moves. Well, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Real Estate Rookie Report.

reply. If you want to get involved in the real estate rookie community, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash forums, or join us in the real estate rookie Facebook group. And don't forget, we have a brand new Instagram account at biggerpocketsrookie. You can find us there. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube at real estate rookie. I'm Ashley and he's Tony, and we'll see you on the next episode.