Real Estate Market in Topeka Ks

[Andrew Cessarich]

Does anyone know how the rental market is in Topeka, Kansas. Thinking of out of state investing and would like to get opinions.

[Shane H.]

I relocated to Topeka from Wichita a year ago - Even though I owned properties in Wichita I was not approved to buy a house here due to purchasing a business so for the first time in my life I had to rent - 

Market was difficult from a renter perspective - things were going quickly -- SEVERE lack of anything quality and I was blown away with what things were renting for.  I was finally able to get super creative after I had the business up and going for 8 mos on my own so was able to get a local bank to finance the house purchase on the rental we were living in.  

Anyways comparing to Wichita which is where all my experience lies - Topeka seems to be very transient - lots of people here for short stints - AirBnB was very competitive and I think a few folks were making money there - same thing would be difficult to get it to work in Wichita - quality rentals are far and few between - Our experience looking at the rental market here was from Sept 17 to about July 18 of this year - as we just weren't sure if we'd be able to buy the house we were living in or wanted to buy it etc so we kept looking the entire time for places to buy/rent.

Another food for thought is property prices are far higher in Topeka than Wichita and property taxes run about 30-40% if not more than Wichita.  (I'm spitballing the increase as I've not actually put pencil to paper using mill levies and completed exact calculations - but I do have my business property to look at and the house we live in to compare tax rates relative to assessed value and compare them to the same things I own in Wichita)

So take all that for what it's worth.