Investor Looking to Rent in KC

[Chris Phillips]

Hello everyone. My wife and I find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. In November of last year, my father passed away. He left a 6 figure life insurance policy. My wife and I picked up and left our jobs in Kansas City and moved 300 miles to Arkansas where he had lived to handle the estate and try our hand at Real Estate Investing.

We bought a 4 unit apartment building and a single family home (for us to live in) in all cash. After struggling to find more acceptable deals in the very small town, we have decided to get back to real life and move back to Kansas City and get real jobs again.

We will continue to rent the apartments and we will rent our house in that area. I have a local friend who will take over property management for us. He also has several rentals.

The problem is, we do not currently have jobs. And we have only owned our investment properties for about 6 months. We’ve talked to several banks, and they will not give us a mortgage because the rent we have received hasn’t been on a tax return yet. We’ve talked to a bunch of landlords and property management companies in KC and they won’t rent to us because we don’t have jobs currently.

We can’t get jobs because we don’t have a place to live. We can’t get a place to live because we don’t have jobs. Lol. It’s a cycle.

We have a good sized amount of cash in the bank. But not enough to buy a property in Kansas City (at least not in an area we’d be comfortable living in). We could buy a single wide trailer in a trailer park, but then would still have to pay lot fees and when we moved out we would have to sell, as most parks won’t allow an owner to rent (at least as far as I’ve seen). There’s not as much Owner Finance in the area online as I expected to see either.

We would honestly like to just rent an apartment or duplex for a year and pay a big chunk of the first year’s rent up front. Then when we get steady jobs we can start looking into buying a duplex to start house hacking. But again, landlords are turning us away because of income requirements.

Anyone have any ideas for us? Or any investors with properties in Kansas City willing to take a “risk” on us? Let me know. Thank you

-Chris