A friend wants to buy a place for around $100k in Denver......what advice do I give them

[John Pruner]

Hi,

I'm a real estate broker in Denver. The parents of one of my buyers asked me to help them find an investment property in Denver. They have about $70k to spend and want to find something that they can almost pay off - so around $80k-$100k, perhaps fix it up themselves, then rent it out.

I also do some RE investment on my own. My analysis of the Denver market is that the returns aren't good enough to justify rental property investment here in terms of cash flow - it's just an appreciation play which can hit or miss. Instead I've invested in Indianapolis, Detroit suburbs, and Atlanta where I can get good cash flow.

Do I steer this novice investor into remote investing? If they don't want to do that - how can I help them search in Denver other than just MLS searching which I think won't find much that would qualify as a good investment property? Should I steer them into other areas within an hour of Denver? Brighton, Greeley, Ft Lupton, Fredrick? Any good ideas/notions about where I should be helping them focus?

Thanks

John

[Tracy Noelle]

I'm new to Bigger Pockets and to real estate investing, but we just spent a few months looking for an investment property to flip or hold in Denver and after giving up on finding something in our original budget (under $200k), we're about to close on something we found for $300k that we're going to fix and hold. If they really want in on Denver, they're going to have to increase their budget. I don't think that's a bad idea if they want to hold rather than flip, but I'm biased!