Baltimore Section 8: How long do properties take to rent?

[Robert Laughlin]

Dear Investment Community,

We are looking to purchase a set of rental portfolios in Baltimore.  Some of the houses will be private, market-rate rentals, while others will be Section 8 homes.  Could anyone share some insights with respect to how long it will take for us to receive inquiries from tenants looking for Section 8 housing? Assume that each home is in decent shape, competitively priced (at or slightly above voucher worth) passed the Section 8 inspection, and has plenty of pictures when advertised on gosection8.com.  Any insight here would be much appreciated.  Thank you!

Bobby

[Ian Barnes]

@Robert Laughlin, Sounds like you should be using a tenant placement person on the ground, like everyone else in Baltimore does.  You will waste more time than its even worth putting pics up on gosection8.com, if you don't have boots on the ground helping with tenant placement, and the paperwork will never get processed correctly or will take a much longer time if you don't have a person that knows people in the voucher office. Your property also can't pass a section 8 inspection until you have a voucher accepted by the office so that doesn't make sense either.  BTW, if you don't have a great local team managing, and analyzing this portfolio on the ground, you are most likely getting ripped off, and will be selling the portfolio in a few years once you realize you aren't making any money.  We see this all the time especially from investors in New York, California, and Florida.

@Shadonna N.If your not already in the portal, you will have to fill out a few forms with contact info, bank info etc, and then expect to not get paid for at least 30-60 days initially, they will pay the back rent, but that's how long it takes to get in their system.