Hello from a Montgomery County, PA Real Estate Newbie

[Jonathan C.]

Greetings.

I am the accountant at a small business but always wanted to do real estate on the side. I love my job but know how fickle employment can be so it never hurts to be prepared.

I have 0 real estate experience but plan on pursuing the landlord route with a friend. We wanted to start a year ago but due to various issues things got delayed. Now we are ready to go and looking into properties.

We currently are equal partners in an LLC, have pre-approval for a $180k mortgage and have a real estate agent who knows our plan and is a landlord himself in the area we are targeting.

We're targeting duplexes, triplexes and quads and made 2 offers so far, one countered but still not realistic so we'll revisit them in a few months when they're hopefully more desperate. The other is a short sale which we are waiting to hear back from.

In the meantime I'm trying to figure out what to actually price houses at. We don't want to overpay and be screwed but figuring out what to offer is very hard. We each have no experience so we are making it up as we go.

I'm looking forward to learning what I can here and receiving solid advice so we don't screw up or screw up too badly.

[Account Closed]

There are a number of things that you can do to learn your local market. I like to drive through the area see what may be for sale, in disrepair, check out for rent signs, look for bandit signs, etc.

I also like to become familiar with any sales in my market area. If possible I'll check out open houses. Are there homes being renovated or new homes being built.

I go out of my way to find out who is buying property in the area.

I like to keep up on zoning changes, code violations, crime reports an community activities.

I have an idea of what rents are for SFR and apartments in the area.

I try to be involved in chamber of commerce events and REI.

Also don't neglect what you can learn from a real estate agent in your area. My desire though is to know my area actually better than they do. Access to the MLS does help otherwise you can use some of the online sites to verify what you are finding.

This is hardly a complete list of things you can do, but it can give you an idea.