Foreign Investor in Indianapolis

[Jo Lynn Tan]

Hi all,

I have to confess my sin. I'm not really that new here but I have been shadow-reading all the posts without introducing myself.  So, here I am!

In 6 week's time, I'm visiting Indianapolis to meet local turnkey providers, investors, wholesalers, and brokers and lenders that I've been in contact with for the last few months. Right now, I'm putting together a 3 day agenda in Indianapolis. If you know of any foreign-investor-friendly wholesaler, realtors, or private lenders I must say hello to, please let me know ;)

I'm Dutch part-time investor with rental properties in Netherlands. Now, I'm living in Asia with only my passive rental income while starting up my business consultancy firm as a travelling nomad.

Having rehabbed (part contractor, part DIY), done house-hacking, and rented out the investment properties in Netherlands, I really had to take a break because the rehab project totally wore me and my partner out. We both also realized how much we loved renovating properties but we also knew how much we'll never want to renovate homes as our full-time career. After more than enough tropical sun, it's time to get back on the horse again.

In the coming 3 years, I target to close 2-3 deals every year with a mix of turn-key and BRRR with my own team. So, hopefully in 3 years I'll own 8-10 cashflowing properties in US through a mix of cash and leveraged buys. I'm not in a rush...

Since I focus 100% on growing my consultancy firm, I'm only doing real estate investing part-time. However, I have interested local investors that keep asking to invest with me potentially as partners or lenders. So, I'm now learning as I go so that eventually I can market deals or work BRRR with local partners to get wholesale deals and rehab properties for rentals.

Long story short, my personal investment comes first. The latter will come after I get a better impression of the market and people I meet during my upcoming trip.

I look forward to meet and get to know more of you here. 

I've been learning a lot from BP forums and I'm grateful with the generous posters here. I also refer a lot of people from my social circle in Asia to BP as well. They all have been in awe how much valuable information you can get for free without paying for seminars. They didn't believe that I learned what I knew from only BP...because a lot of them have paid hundreds or thousands of US dollars to attend a real estate seminar course and learn something what's covered in BP blog posts for free.

Look forward to learn more from all of you. 

P.S. I'm always ready to diversify myself by observing what's happening in other markets eg: Birmingham, Kansas City, and Jacksonville. But I focus on Indy for now.

Peace out.

Jo

[Jo Lynn Tan]

Originally posted by @Vladimir K.:

Originally posted by @Josh C.:

Indy is a great market if you buy in decent areas and have a good team in place. Let me know if I can help. It's a pretty popular market for foreigners who do there research based on our economics and landlord friendly laws. Getting any debt will be your challenge.

Good luck!

 Hi Josh, what is a good way to gauge decent area for investing in Indy?  (I.e. crime reports, school rankings, etc..?)

 Hey @Vladimir K., you posed your questions to Josh. But I thought I could share my experience after assessing tonnes of input I read from the forum threads.

For me, I used crime stats, top employers/companies locations, local news sites about development in neighbourhoods, school rankings and most importantly, I read almost every threads with keywords "indianapolis neighbourhoods". 

But these data and stats only told me so much. Google map only showed you how a house/ street look like. Since all the crime and school stats were telling me I should stay away from where I want to get to, I've compiled what local investors' commented about specific streets in Indy neighbourhood into my own report. So, I could find exceptions within certain neighbourhoods I like. At the end of the day, the investability of every deal differs street by street. This is what I've been hearing and I agree after my own due diligence. 

Your criteria and budget on the type of houses you look for will make a huge difference as well. That's where you can spot areas based on rentability.

I've got a few sites in my favourites but these are some sources I've been referring to:

Affordability Map (someone shared this in the forum)	https://www.trulia.com/local/irvington-indianapolis-in/type:home_prices_listings_affordability
City Data	http://www.city-data.com/city/Indianapolis-Indiana.html
IndyMap	http://maps.indy.gov/MapIndy/index.html

Hope this is helpful.