Buying Property In Maine

[Reed Baker]

Hello BP community,

My friend and classmate, Collin, and I posted a couple of weeks ago about buying an investment property in Brunswick, ME to rent out to Bowdoin College students. For reference, we are both tenants in off-campus houses that command rents well north of 1.5% of the home prices. We have seen firsthand the cash flow that landlords are able to take in each month, and we have decided we want to be the ones receiving the rents instead of paying them out.

With that said, we are beginning to expand our search outside of the Brunswick area into nearby towns such as Lisbon and Bath. If we were to make our first purchase in one of these, however, we would likely rent to families, not students. This has opened up the possibility of buying a multifamily home as our first property. Should we be focusing on a certain property type as our first investment in Maine, or should we keep our options open? 

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Collin & Reed

[Dan Weber]

@Reed Baker I would target one strategy that you are comfortable with and excites you then dive in to learning as much about it as you can and doing it the best that you can. Out of those, I would choose either to stick to the student housing idea in Brunswick OR to search for a multi in Bath or Lisbon. I like Bath for multi-family housing. I don't think the numbers are quite as strong for SF rentals there. Both of those options present strong investment opportunities and you could be successful at either.