Investing in Columbia, Missouri

[Jared Ebert]

After living in Columbia for almost 10 years, my family and I just moved to Cape Girardeau, MO. We've been researching REI the past couple years and and have been planning to start investing once we were settled here in Cape. Cape is actually pretty small, and we're both back and forth to Columbia almost monthly for business reasons. We know the area and we know contractors we trust. Now that we're finally settled, I'm wondering if Columbia might be a great place to invest. I'm a beginner with no investments yet. My plan is buy and hold.

Anyone having success in Como? What's working in Columbia? Are you liking college rentals, SFR, or multifamily? Thanks!

[Karl B.]

I am investing in COMO (multi-family) and plan to live there (been between there and L.A. packing all my things).

I chose COMO over A LOT of other cities. Why? Growing economy, growing population, good taxes, low cost of living, friendly local government. I'm also open to investing in KC & St. Louis as they have larger MFs and that's what I'm interested in.

COMO is the land of duplexes. For 2-4 units it's so much easier to find a duplex. I've seen a few triplexes on the MLS and only one 4-unit.

You can reach the 1% rule fairly easily and maybe get up to 1.25% and maybe close to 1.5% if you're looking to buy a bit of a project (older property) that has some sweat equity. 

Having said that, one can still buy a 1% rule duplex and cashflow hundreds per door on a 30-year mortgage. And the newer and larger units sometimes have separate water meters = not having to pay the water bill as an owner which is huge. 

A lot of duplexes on the MLS are meh. It's funny because some are pieces of crap and their returns are no better than newer builds that are pretty nice.

I bought one of the largest duplexes available and it's in a fairly decent neighborhood. I was told there was some rifraff and shootings a few years ago a few blocks over but the police got rid of those fools.

I was told COMO has some trouble with their police as their hirings haven't kept up with the population growth but they're catching up. 

Neighbors are nice and the neighborhood is quiet. 

I'm also going to look into Jefferson City as they have had a lot of growth and the returns are (according to my realtor) better than COMO.