Out of State Investing -- Any Favorite Places?

[Alexandra Fisher]

Hi everyone!

I'm a new real estate investor based in New York City. I'm interested in out of state rental properties, preferably multi-unit (duplex, triplex) for buy and hold around the 80K-100K purchase price. 

I would love to know from this amazing community here if you have any areas in the country you find particularly attractive and why they work so well for you.

If you're willing to share your stories, you'll make me smile (consider this your good deed of the day) and I'm sure many others on here will smile back at you too (multiple good deeds in one day!).

Hope to hear from some of you talented BP people on here.

Alexandra

[Adam Sankowski]

Hey @Alexandra Fisher , no offense to anyone here but yeah, you def. don't have to start with 100+ units ha.  You can find plenty of excellent PM's who would love to take on a duplex.  Especially if this might be the first of more purchases.  I LOVE Providence as a possible investment,, and have been looking there myself, but a duplex or triplex there would be more in the 200-350K range I would think, depending on how much work you would need to put into it.  If you're looking for basically a "good to go" property I think you're probably in the 350K range.  Same for anything in MA outside of Boston.  Frank who commented above would be the expert on Providence though!

If you're looking for 80-100K you're probably looking for the mid-west. There are plenty of places in the Midwest where you can find that price point but I'd avoid any areas with negative population growth (Cleveland etc). I personally started with investing in both KC and Indy and since have fallen in love with Indy and focus there now. Now, I'm sure that you'll get some advice from folks to avoid small multi-families in Indy because a lot of them are in rougher areas. To me that's advice from five years ago... I think the younger generation is cool with MF housing more than older folks. Still I see the logic/ concern in why would someone want to live in a $600 a month duplex instead of a $800 a month SFH? That class of tenant for small MF's in the mid-west might be something that you would want to avoid. It's good to remember that the midwest isn't like NYC (or Boston where I'm from) where everything is a multi-family building and living in a single family is something only for crazy wealthy folks or the suburbs. In the midwest cheaper single family houses are right close to the down town so you do have to consider the difference in your tenant base if they really can't spring the extra $200-300 a month so that they don't have to share a wall with someone else. But... I think you can mitigate that risk a bit if you buy as close as you can to downtown or the "hip" Indy areas- Bates/ Hendricks, Garfield Park, Fountain Square (you won't get in there but you can get south Fountain) for that price you'll be ok. That might be more like 120-140k though if you can stretch a bit higher.

I think the key is to go side-by-side verse anything small MF where people are living above/ below each other as that will have lots more turn over. Indy has tons of great side by side duplexes.  David Greene's book is great.  I would first focus on finding a great realtor and seems like many in "investor friendly cities" are also hooked up with PM's as well so that's an easy way to build two members of your team.  Look for a realtor that also has contractors they use.  Almost every realtor has a lender they recommend too and bam there's your team!  Regardless of where you end up make sure you visit in person for a few days.  Stay in Airbnb's right in the neighborhood that you're considering and try to live like the locals for a bit and see what you think?   That's what I did first, flew out and met a ton of realtors.  Although the main property that I looked at in person ended up falling through I met some great team members and now I feel like I can buy from afar with confidence. Ok, this is long enough, hope this helps and good luck!