New to multi family investment

[Edgard Leite]

Hello everyone, I am a new investor that recently joined BiggerPockets and I'm excited to start connecting with people here.

I currently live in a small town south of PA, about 1.5 hours from DC and Baltimore.

I have been thinking about starting in Real Estate for a long time now, but because I have moved so often due to my job I was afraid of buying in my backyard and having to move and manage from far away.

This year I talked to my wonderful wife and we decided that it was time to get over this fear and start investing long distance since we will never know what the future holds. In July 2020, we started researching different markets and decided to start in Louisiana since my wife was born in Baton Rouge and lived there for a while. We spent some time connecting with realtors, property management companies and getting pre approved for loans before we started the home search.

In August we started analyzing hundreds of deals and got some offers rejected (as expected) until we finally got an accepted offer on a fourplex unit in October. We closed in less than 30 days using a HELOC to cover the down payment and are very excited with our first investment property.

During this process, we had so many doubts about investing in Louisiana because that market really does not have much population growth or market appreciation, but we decided that we would run to the finish line, buy our first property and at least use this one as a learning experience before we decide to go into a new market. Luckily for us this property is generating good cash flow ($1,000 per month with no money down), but I still think that it will not appreciate much in the future.

Now that we got over the fear of long distance real estate investment, we are ready to take to the next level and start looking for a market that has good long term appreciation and generates good cash flow. I became really passionate about multifamily investment and I am hoping to find a good deal in a 8-24 units apartment complex for our next investment.

Many people talk about the key things to look for when selecting a market, like population growth, job growth, rental price growth, etc, but is there a website that combine these trends and that you use as a guideline when making your decisions?

We would like to start looking for commercial brokers, local community banks, multifamily property management companies and local partners to start investing in apartment complexes very soon.

Thank you very much for your help in advance and I'm looking forward to connecting with people here!