Kansas City one bedroom question

[Brent Kiger]

All, I’m looking at a package deal in Kansas City, it’s actual KCMO but it’s close to riverside and Gladstone, two good suburbs in KC. I’m curious to investors experience with one bedroom properties in suburbs. One of the properties is a one bedroom house and the other is a duplex and each side has one bedroom. The one bedrooms are mostly occupied at 600/mo with the current landlord paying all utilities. Any insight from investors with one bedrooms would be helpful. Trying to determine vacancy rates, turnover rates, ease of renting, etc. Always appreciate this community’s insight. Thanks Brenr

[Andrew Johnson]

@Brent Kiger I don't know squat about KC but I do have a lot of 1 bedroom/1 bathroom units.  My experience is that if you have "too many" of them they are tough to fill.  It's a smaller group of potential tenants that want a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom and the 2/1 really opens you up a lot more.  The reason why I was okay buying a bunch of them is that where I invest you have one large and three small universities.  So you have a "backstop" of students as potential tenants.  And there will always be a student that wants to live without roommates.  You just have to make sure the units are nice enough (compared to others in the area) that you can rent them out for above-average rents.  Basically, you want to avoid the bottom-of-the-barrell tenants.  Since I don't know KC I can't say what a "$600/month tenant" feels like, if they have great credit, no evictions, etc.  Or if all of those "quality tenants" step up and rent 2/1.  I'm being overly general but when you have a bunch of 1/1s you need to ensure you don't have to lighten standards to fill the last few units.  Those tenants stand a decent chance of costing you a lot more over the long run.  Just my two cents.