Baltimore Rental Investing

[Gina Gohl]

Hi everyone,

I am new to Maryland, about an hour outside of Baltimore. I'm interested in investing in my first property. I had thought about multifamily which I would live in a unit and rent the others- however I'm not seeing many of those properties available. I have also been toying with the idea of buying a place and renting out the finished basement or bedrooms while living on the property, or buying a property just to rent out, maybe on a room by room basis to students. 

That being said, are there any investors in the Baltimore area that may be willing to share advice on renting in Baltimore as a new investor? I'm familiar with Baltimore's reputation so I need to know neighborhoods or blocks that are safe. Ideally, I'd like to find a location that is "up and coming" and maybe has a several block radius that is considered safe. 

[Sam Lewis]

Originally posted by @Gina Gohl:

Hi everyone,

I am new to Maryland, about an hour outside of Baltimore. I'm interested in investing in my first property. I had thought about multifamily which I would live in a unit and rent the others- however I'm not seeing many of those properties available. I have also been toying with the idea of buying a place and renting out the finished basement or bedrooms while living on the property, or buying a property just to rent out, maybe on a room by room basis to students. 

That being said, are there any investors in the Baltimore area that may be willing to share advice on renting in Baltimore as a new investor? I'm familiar with Baltimore's reputation so I need to know neighborhoods or blocks that are safe. Ideally, I'd like to find a location that is "up and coming" and maybe has a several block radius that is considered safe. 

Hey Gina, what I've found is that greater Baltimore has fewer multifamily properties than other parts of the U.S. - a lot of the traditional househacking - living in one unit and renting out the rest is harder to apply here. What I've done is curated multiple househacks in student and young professional hubs such as in Towson and Federal Hill - in these cases renting by the bedroom. 

My general advice would be to determine whether you are open to renting by the bedroom, which would require you to share common area space with roommates. In 95% of cases, I recommend finding a single family home (SFH) in the suburbs of Baltimore (think Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard counties, depending on where your work is) and renting to 20-somethings.

Key criteria for a successful SFH househack:

• Suitable zoning criteria, i.e. room rental laws (county by county)
• Within 1 mile of hospital, major company HQ, public university, and private university (to attract 20-somethings)
• At least half as many bathrooms as bedrooms (i.e. a 4 bed / 2.5 bath could work, but 4 / 1.5 could get sticky)
• Plenty of driveway space / street parking (1 per roommate)
• Plenty of kitchen space (since the kitchen is the most occupied room other than individual rooms)
• Basement or side entrance entry point (i.e. if you wanted to turn the basement into your living space, you could enter from a side entrance)
• Un-involved neighborhood community (cul-de-sacs can be the worst spots)
• Turn-key quality (i.e. you won't need to fix much of anything when you move in)

This list is by no means exhaustive, but things to think about when you work with an agent on a SFH househack. I generally recommend the following suburbs of Baltimore for solid rentership: Columbia, Glen Burnie, Towson.