Starting off in Columbus, GA

[Tia Anderson]

Hello everyone. I am excited about joining this community. All of your stories are helping and educating me about things I never knew. 

My fiance and I are planning on becoming landlords in the Columbus area. We attend college now, but after graduating in 2015, we have dreams of buying our first rental property in cash. Right now we are trying to consume as much information as we can. We are both driven and young 21 & 22. Long term goals is to buy and rent out at least one property each year. So right now, we are trying to find out the best way to achieve this dream while working full time as a RN and a chemist.

[Joel Owens]

Know your area. Drive by it during the day and at night. Look up the tax records to see if other houses are investor owned or homeowner?? Homeowners tend to take better care of properties versus a street that is all rentals when you rent out your property. Look for dogs in the backyard, noisy neighbors, etc. Anything that could turn possibly off people to renting your investment. 

Check crime report for violent versus non-violent crimes. Check median income for the area and if population growth is occurring which usually fuels job growth and annual rent increase upwards. Try to buy a property built after 1974 so you do not have lead based paint remediation and other issues with older houses that eat all your cash flow. Try to buy a 3 bed 2 bath with a 2 car garage on a decent lot hopefully in a good subdivision. Check to see if the subdivision has an HOA. It's actually a positive thing for a landlord so that the tenants/owners can't just be trashy with their yards or vehicles etc. Do not buy too large of a house (example a 5 bedroom) as the rents start to not equal the higher purchase price.

Stick to bread and butter properties that easily rent, have good rent growth, and are easily resalable down the road when you want to 1031 exchange into one or more other properties tax deferred.