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People can obviously make money in the coin op laundry business.
But it sounds to me like you are way underestimating your start up and repair costs.
This website gives some rough suggestions for a much larger operation than it sounds like you are considering, and states that you can expect to break even in three years.
Can you afford to be in the red for three years?
http://www.mac-gray.com/la5_costs.html
What about your water and electricity costs?
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Yes, this article describes a MUCH larger undertaking. I am talking about an initial investment really of only 12 machines. Importantly, there is no lease required. The water and electricity are paid by the host apartment complex in exchange for their cut of the profit. I may be underestimating repair expenses, but probably not hugely. The machines will initially be new and presumably less prone to needing repairs.
I would suspect my estimates are most off in the areas of the number of cycles per week and having no idea what the current profit-sharing breakdown is between machine owner and apartment complex owner.
More conservatively, maybe of ~160 residents, 80% of them use he building's machines (128). I'll lower the loads per week to 1.5 and the percent dried to 67%. I think that gives $432/week and $1872/month. Change to account for sharing at the earnings level, rather than profits. I saw on a vending machine thread that the industry standard seems to be 60/40 in the machine-owners favor.
Income: 1872
Expenses: 1478
Landlord share (40%): 749
Loan repayment: 229
Maintenance: 300
Accountant: 200
Profit: 394
So it appears I'm looking at about 5K/year from my 10K investment in the machines + a little elbow grease. This is a return of about $400/machine/year or about twice what the buy making $137K on 750 machines is making per machine. Not sure exactly how to interpret that. His costs may be higher thanks to a permanent staff, but he may have some efficiencies of scale working for him. Maybe my estimates are off. Hard to say for sure without seeing his books.