What Are the Best Real Estate Markets in Pennsylvania?

[Fami Fozi]

Hi everyone, 

First time real estate investor here. I am interested in investing in a property in Pennsylvania. I'm having trouble deciding on a good location to start out. I prefer to get into a multi-family rental property under $200k and am open to investing anywhere in the state as long as the returns are good. If certain areas are more suited to flipping homes, I wouldn't mind considering a flip as well. 

Either way, I was wondering if anyone had any tips as to where I should begin my search for my first property. What specific cities and neighborhoods would everyone recommend? What method of finding properties have you found to be the most effective? Any help would be appreciated. 

Thanks in advance :)

Fami

[Matt A.]

Fami - Im in the Lehigh Valley, and while not a bad area, Im finding it more difficult to scale (meaning get into larger properties) as we ramp up for the year. Most of whats around this area seems to be converted 1900 era homes... and you can expect that youll need some repairs going into these. 

That said, I would first take some time to define what your looking to accomplish - outline your goals and ask why your going to invest. 1) is this for cash-flow? 2) appreciation, or 3) Flipping? The tax treatment on each is quite different and going into this without a plan cas cost you a bundle if you haven't thought about it in advance. There are a 'gazillion' RE agents that "think" they know investing because they can pop a sign in the front lawn and get someone through a transaction.... that too is a recipe for disaster. Spend a LOT of time talking with agents, better yet, get to the brokers (albeit that's going to be tough as a new investor). Learn how to analyze a deal in 5 minutes (you'll go through a few hundred before you can master that one - and I still struggle, but it will save you a TON of time), know your exit strategies (and I mean have several) before you place an offer.

Philadelphia might be a great market (I dont know, havent gotten serious about it myself mainly as I work in that area and personally dont care for it), but go into this eyes wide open... if you dont Im sure you can imagine the results.

Good luck!