This is WHY people say this WON'T cashflow

This is why people say real estate doesn't cash flow. I just came into a unit. This is the grossest smoking unit I've been in a while. It reeks. The walls are actually supposed to be white. If they look beige behind me, it's just tobacco leeched into the walls. A lot of people will close deals, especially when they're new, they'll close deals with just enough cash to close. They're like, hey, I'll fix that to cash flow. And this deal cash flowed like $1,000 a month when we started. This is a $4,500 fix. The tenant who left doesn't have the money to fix it, so there's no point in going after them for that. But as you go through units, especially when it's a gross turn, if you try to do this out of cash flow, you just lost 4.5 months of cash flow. By the time you fix this in 4.5 months, someone else is going to move out. But guess what? You couldn't lease this unit because you were fixing it out of cash flow. The fix here is just do deals where you have or raise enough money to have your reserve, your renovation budget, and your cash to close. You have to have all of that up front, and this ends up being a 1-year, maybe even 6-month project. Otherwise, you're chasing the cash flow for 3, 4 years. You're wondering why you never get paycheck. Do not let your property run you. Run your property. Start with the right amount of money in the account. If you don't have it, find a way to structure the deal so you do.