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Real estate & rental

Rental Maintenance Reserve Calculator

What to set aside each month for the components that will certainly need replacing.

Your numbers

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Kitchen, bathrooms, windows, flooring, water heater.

Result

Monthly reserve $388.89
Annual reserve $4,667
As a share of rent 14.96%
Roof component $145.83
HVAC component $118.06
Set aside $388.89 a month, which is 14.96% of rent. The roof alone accounts for $145.83 and the HVAC $118.06, and both will certainly come due.

Building up from real components is far more accurate than the usual rules of thumb, which range from 1% of value to 10% of rent and can differ from each other by a factor of three. An older building needs more, and a recently renovated one genuinely needs less for a while.

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Questions

About this calculator

Is the 1% rule good enough?

As a rough check, and it is better than nothing. It ignores the building's actual age and condition, which is exactly what determines whether the next five years are quiet or expensive.

Should the reserve be in a separate account?

It helps. Money that stays in the operating account gets spent, and the point of a reserve is that the roof is funded before it leaks rather than after.

The formula

reserve = sum of each component's replacement cost divided by its remaining life in months

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Estimating is the easy part

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