St. Louis Yay or Nay?

[EJ Devarie]

Hello,

I'm looking for some more information about buying and flipping in St. Louis MO. I have heard mixed reviews so reply with what you know.

Thank you ahead!

[Max Householder]

Hey EJ, I live and invest in St. Louis. It is a very diverse market where investors can have success in a variety of ways. Yes, there are plenty of areas with < $30k houses that you could lose your shirt on, but there are many areas that are seeing rapid growth and price appreciation. In general, investors do well flipping in St. Louis County (the city is split between the "City" and the "County") and many buy-and-hold in the city where there are a lot of small multi-families, think 1920s-30s construction brick duplexes, fourplexes, and 8-12 units.

I have spent some time in Indianapolis, not studying for investment purposes, but just spending time and it reminds me a lot of St. Louis where there are pockets of nice business districts and nice properties to go with them (Broad Ripple, Mile Square, all the craft breweries, etc.) and then many not-so-good areas.

Aaron Klatt is right that the stats for population growth in the St. Louis region are somewhat poor (more so NOT growing as opposed to rapidly shrinking) but there are many neighborhoods that are seeing rapid growth and population influx, you just need to know which streets and blocks are the right ones. The county/city divide also hurts the city as most of St. Louis County is rather nice with many middle/upper middle class, and affluent areas as well as many stable blue-collar type areas, but it gets counted separated from the city where the few really, really, really bad areas tend to skew the data.