The 10 questions every new landlord should answer before buying
I've watched new landlords lose money in three specific ways over the last decade, and the pattern is almost identical every time. Under-reserved for a major repair. Placed a bad tenant because they were in a rush to stop the mortgage from eating them alive. Underestimated CapEx because the listing didn't mention the 22-year-old roof. This quiz is built around those failure modes. Each question maps to a real failure, and the scoring weights reflect how badly each one hurts in practice.
Why reserves are question #1
The single most common reason new landlords wash out is running out of cash reserves. A typical scenario: you buy a $225,000 duplex with 25% down ($56,250), $6,500 in closing, and a $4,000 deposit-and-paint turn on the vacant side. You're in for $67,000. Your PITI is $1,480/month, rent is $1,350/side = $2,700 total, and the deal underwrites at $420/month cash flow.
Three months in, the upstairs tenant stops paying. You file the eviction in month 4, get your court date in month 6, and the tenant vacates in month 7 leaving a $3,200 turn. That's 4 months of lost rent ($5,400), $1,200 in legal fees, $3,200 in turn costs, and $2,800 in PITI that came out of your pocket. Total hit: $12,600. If your reserves are thin, you're selling the property at a loss. If you had 6 months of PITI per door in reserves ($17,760), you barely notice.
Tenant screening: the line between profit and disaster
Every experienced landlord I know has a written screening criteria doc. Income 3x rent minimum. Credit score 620 or higher. No evictions in the last 7 years. Two years of verifiable rental history with landlord contact (not the current landlord — they have a motive to lie). No smoking. Pet policy in writing. Deposit equal to one month's rent plus pet deposit.
The doc matters because applicant #1 will seem fine, and applicant #3 who actually meets your criteria won't show up for three weeks. If you don't have the criteria written down, you'll compromise on applicant #1 to stop the bleed, and you'll regret it. Every bad tenant in my circle started as a compromised screening decision.
CapEx — the numbers most first-timers miss
A 15-year-old water heater has roughly 3 years of life left. A 20-year-old roof is on borrowed time. A 25-year-old furnace is a time bomb. New landlords underwrite rentals without a CapEx schedule and get blindsided by systems they didn't budget to replace. Build a one-page CapEx sheet: roof (25yr, $14,000), furnace (18yr, $6,500), AC (15yr, $5,500), water heater (10yr, $1,800), flooring (10yr, $4,500), paint (5yr, $2,500), appliances (10yr, $3,000). Divide each by its remaining useful life. That monthly reserve is your CapEx number. If your deal doesn't cash flow after that line item, it doesn't cash flow.
Related tools to run before you buy
Stress-test your deal math with our rental cash flow analyzer, which includes CapEx and reserves by default. If you're debating BRRRR vs. a traditional buy-and-hold, our fix-and-flip vs. buy-and-hold comparison shows 10-year wealth outcomes side-by-side. When you're ready to underwrite, run the deal through our cash-on-cash return calculator — the only return metric that accounts for leverage on a rental — and the rental vacancy impact calculator to see what a bad year does to your returns.
Who this quiz is for
First-time landlord candidates in the underwriting or education phase — not someone who already owns 4 doors and knows what they're doing. The scoring is tuned to separate "not ready" from "close" from "ready." If you score in the top tier, go run deal math. If you score in the middle, plug the gaps before making an offer. If you score low, don't buy a rental this year. The single expensive mistake this quiz prevents will pay for a year of your salary.