Best vs Worst home in a neighborhood

[Raymond Doot]

Hello, in the latest BP podcast, one of our fearless leaders, Brandon Turner, talked about a fourplex that he wanted to be the nicest one in the neighborhood in order to help it withstand market movements better. I have been under the impression that when looking for an MF deal, one looks for an average or below average building in a neighborhood. How does one decide if/when to be looking for the best/worst building in a neighborhood? Thank you.

[JD Martin]

@Brandon Turner I'm not sure is so fearless. I hear he's afraid of electric razors! :)

The general idea is that if the market starts getting shaky, that if people are going to live in that neighborhood they'll pick his MF before another one. That's a little different than buying the worst property in the best neighborhood with the idea of adding value by rehabbing, repositioning, etc. If you do buy the worst property in the best neighborhood, you don't want it to remain the worst property in the neighborhood - there's a point at which you want to do a better job of attracting customers than your competitors, and that's going to be difficult to do if your place is a dump relative to the rest of the neighborhood.