How to chose your neighborhood - Biggest Commitment yet

[Yuval Molcho]

Hey all,

The idea of this topic was trying to make sense (and order?) of the most important parameters when choosing a new market when entering remote REI. As you know this is maybe the biggest decision a new investor will have to make and the variables are countless. Obviously it depends on the niche and strategy you have in mind, but just for our discussion, let's assume I want to use the "BRRRR" method on SF properties.

When I tried to think of the most important parameters for choosing a new market, the things that popped into my head were stuff like:

1. Zipcode parameters - Crime, Transportation/walkability, homeowners/rentals ratio, school rank, population demographic parameters, median house income, etc.

2. State/County Parameters - Pro Investors State laws, positive immigration & growth, county regulations, POS and Property Taxes, etc.

3. Properties Parameters - Median Home Price, Price/Rent value (maybe the most important?), etc. 

4. Unforeseen / Other Parameters - Weather, large scale transformations such as an industry collapse or relocation, etc.

Do you guys have any other things you look into before choosing your new investment zip code? 

What do you think is more important? Let's say you have a neighborhood with an amazing 1:8 Price/Rent ratio, great general growth in population, and low unemployment, but with a relatively high crime rate and no school with a rank above 3? What parameters are a NO-GO and what are nice to have?

Hope this discussion will help as many people as possible, I'm sure we all do things a bit different and it will be nice to see the different tactics each of us uses.

Thank you for reading! and hope to read your comments.

Yuval