Saying Hello from New York City, NY!

[Brian G.]

Hello, all! Nice to "meet" you! My name is Brian and I'm new to the BP world. Been listening to a few of the podcasts and it's re-started my interest in real estate, so I figured I'd jump in with both feet. 

A little about me: I live in NYC and have a full-time job that I love. That said, see the first part and you can understand my interest in earning more money! Over the past 4 years, I've invested with a friend back in my hometown of Dayton, OH. It's a mini-Detroit type market, where population declines due to the auto industry's flight have hollowed out the city and left a devastated housing market with more supply and demand. However, the low cost of the homes, the demand for rent, and the resurgence of certain neighborhoods has provided some great opportunities. We have 6 doors now that are pretty honed-in and stabilized, so we've finally reached some smoother sailing. That said, there were plenty of bumps along the way felt by most investors: expensive repairs, bad tenants, and even a family member or two lining their pockets with our money. But, we've gone through the Andy Dufrense (All these years and I didn't know that's how it was spelled!) crawling through the sewer pipe and things have gotten better. Major repairs have been made already, most of the renters are multi-year, and we financed out at amounts that are all above money invested in the properties, even at 75% LTVs, so we've got the value-add working well! All notes are covered by rents with room to spare, so we've been pretty happy as of late.

But, we're looking to move into something different. We're both a little absentee (my buddy is much closer than me, but still an hour or so away), so we'd like to consolidate our operations under fewer roofs over buying more SFHs and having more separate issues, yards to mow, and neighbors to keep happy. We're not actively looking, but we have a reasonable chunk of change sitting in our current business account to deploy and the potential for north of 6 figures if we both go into our personal pockets. It's starting to burn a hole, which has brought both of us to BP (he's still in podcast land only) in search of inspiration.

This certainly seems like the place to get started and I look forward to digging into the site more to learn as much as possible! Thank you guys for making this a great resource! 

[Moshe H.]

@Brian G. First of all, neither New City nor Nanuet are part of the East Ramapo Central School District, which is where most of the contention currently lies. It is true that more orthodox Jews (by the way, the term "Hasidics" as opposed to "Hasids" or "Hasidim" is borderline derogatory - also, by the way, many of us who live here are not Hassidic even though we are Orthodox and send our children to private schools...) are moving into those areas. However, the battle is more because the current residents don't want "us" to change the makeup of their neighborhoods - not because it has a depressing effect on property prices or because anyone is "taking over" the school district anytime soon. Quite the contrary - in areas where the Jews want to move in, it always drives up property prices. A month or two ago the second priciest property on the market in Rockland County was in Monsey, the heart of the (so-called) "ultra-orthodox" neighborhoods.

The supposed strongarm tactics to acquire homes are usually no different than anything you will read on BiggerPockets about direct marketing like mailers, phone calls and knocking on doors. Many people in Rockland county, some Jewish, use @Brandon Turner's beloved "driving for dollars" strategy to find off-market properties. But because of the inter-communal tensions here, it has become politicized. I am sure there are people who are too aggressive in their strategies, there are good and bad everywhere and I certainly would call out and criticize those individuals. However, leaving aside other market conditions, which I'm not weighing in on, I see no reason for the expansion of the orthodox community to discourage potential property investors from the region.