Investing in Northern Virginia but Live In Maryland

[Aj Bowman]

Hi Everyone,

I live in Montogomery County Maryland therefore I know this area best and would like to invest in this area. I mostly would like to fix and flip then get into buy and holds in the future. However, I'm am finding out that deals are pretty hard to come by in this area. Therefore I wanted to widen my search for houses in other counties in Maryland and even into Northern Virginia because I fairly familiar with that area as well.

My first question is how is the real estate investing in the Northern Virgina area. I haven't done much research in that area mostly because I haven't been looking in that area. Being that that the drive isn't that far I would really like to touch in that area.

My second question is my realtor is only familiar with Montgomery and Frederick Counties therefor he did not want to expand my search because could not give me advice in areas like Baltimore and PG county and it was not worth it to him to travel that far. But I wanted to keep him because he has helped me out a lot so I just wanted a different realtor to help me in those areas but when I approached a realtor to help he said that I could not be represented two different people. Also I found a house I wanted comps on in Northern Virgina and sent them to my realtor and he said that he did not have access to the MLS in Virgina. So I don't really know what to do about this situation.

My final question is if I have an LLC in Maryland can I use it in Virgina or will I have to get an LLC in Virgina for my flips?

Thanks for the help everyone

-AJ

[Russell Brazil]

If you have an exclusive agreement with your current agent, then the NAR Code of Ethics prevents another agent from doing business with you. However if you do not have an exclusive agreement, then another agent may represent you. However many good agents will not work with someone who has another agent.....so I perfectly understand why another agent would not want to work with you since you have another agent. What if an agent who covers Northern Virginia or PG County areas works for months trying to get you a property....then you end up using your other agent to buy in MoCo...now that other agent has just wasted months of time and gotten nothing out of it. Now if you were an established flipper instead of a beginner, that would be a completely different story, and you could work with multiple agents...as in those cases they probably would not actually be spending any more time than just sending you an email with an address...there would not be much work involved, as many established flippers do not even need to set foot inside the house to know what their offer is.

As for the comps....your agent has access to MRIS which covers all of Maryland, DC, Northern Virginia and parts of WV and PA. He may not feel comfortably comping the property, but he has access to the MLS in those areas.