Researching Markets

[Kim Handelman]

Hey everyone, I've realized that my local market (CT shoreline and CT in general) isn't the best market to invest in for buy and hold. Finding properties that fit the 2% rule is a joke and even going with the 1% rule is practically non-existant. I'm looking into investing in larger apartment complexes. I found a few threads on researching areas that were basically on where to find data. Not sure exactly what to do with that data. Any help is much appreciated.

[Andrew Syrios]

Originally posted by @Kim Handelman:

Me again, to add one more question to the one I posted above, Has anyone read the book "Emerging Real Estate Markets" by David Lindahl"?

I have. It's a pretty good book, although he's focusing on commercial real estate. There are a lot of free websites that can help. City-data.com and CLRSearch.com are my favorite. City-data has a map feature that can break down subdivisions by per-capita income. And CLRSearch can get you any info you want on zip codes, including crime rates. There are also some even better paid sites. 

One other note, be careful about the 2% rule. I've heard the national average is 0.7%. You don't need 2% to cash flow and I fear that rule pushes people into terrible areas or to do bad rehabs with subpar contractors. We usually aim for 1.5% and we do great with that. But in some really nice areas, we settle for 1.2 to 1.3%. I classify areas by what rent/cost I am willing to tolerate there. It shouldn't be a blanket number.