Illinois market?

[Christopher Earling]

Hello again everyone!

My wife and I are wanting to move back to the Illinois area and are also looking to invest there as well. It's been a while since I've been there though so I was hoping for some general advice on some places to look for.. 

We are military so our first idea was to buy near Scott AFB but the crime out there seems a little to high. And that crosses off Rockford as well. Next we have been looking at the Joliet braidwood area, and parts of the northern state such as McHenry county. We've seen a few things that look promising but we just want to hear how other people are doing in the state and if they've been noticing anything. 

We would be moving in about two years, but I wanted to get at least one rental out there. Our goal seems to be to get a nice house in Homer Glen area but we would need to work up to that. 

Thanks for the discussion!

[Aaron Mikottis]

If we are talking about generalities, the West side is considered desirable whereas the east is considered undesirable. Take a look at the location of our housing projects, however, because there is a band along the river on the west side that is a little rougher. 

Here is a link to the map I made when I first started looking at Joliet. The orange areas are places I would like to invest in based on a metric I made up trying to find places with a good rate of return while still being in reasonable areas. Now that I know the market more there are more places on the west I would absolutely work in... But you're gonna have a harder time getting a 1-2% deal there. And there's a few east side areas I'm more leery of now. So basically, use this as a launching pad but do more research.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByqwQQCenUK7SFFwOEd4aktRcjg