New Investor in Memphis

[Augustus Gottlieb]

Hello, my name is Gus Gottlieb. I’m a student at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, and am looking to get into real estate investing. I’m mainly looking at house hacking and potentially some multi family homes. I’ve done my best to educate myself, but there’s no teacher like experience so if there’s anyone in the area that would like to share their investment experiences or any tips I would be very grateful. Happy to be here and excited to get started!

[Jonathan McGee]

Hello @Augustus Gottlieb and welcome to BP! You've definitely come to the right place to learn more about investing and there are quite a few of us here locally in Memphis. I'm glad to hear you've gained interest in investing here locally!

While I understand the draw to start out with multi-family properties, it can sometimes be challenging to begin with. One of the main reasons is that in order to do a "house hack" is that you would have to find a duplex that has both sides available for purchase. Memphis is one of the cities where you can own one side of a duplex and someone else can own the other so it makes it slightly harder to find a deal where both sides are available for sale. Not to say that they aren't out there, but definitely harder to find. 

You'll also notice that there are not very many triplex or quads available, either. Memphis is dominated by single family homes and larger multi family complexes. There are a few triplex/quads in the city, but they are usually in less desirable parts of town where I would think you would not want to actually live in it yourself. 

Starting out with investing in single family homes or duplexes in my opinion are a safe way to start out and understand the process of investing. Since you are considering a live in flip or house hack, I'm assuming you are looking to purchase with a conventional loan. You could consider investing in a 3/2 or a larger single family home like a 4/3 and rent out rooms in the home. There are always people in Memphis looking to rent rooms. Especially with you being a student at Rhodes, I imagine you would have no problem finding people to rent rooms! You could definitely look into the areas surrounding Rhodes in 38107 and there are some great investment opportunities there but there are also some bad spots so make sure to do some homework on the property and its surrounding streets. The closer you are to the college, the better. The 38111 area would be a good spot for you as well. There is a site called Memphis ULoop that you can use to advertise your rooms to college students. 

Feel free to reach out to me if you would like to discuss more! I'd be more than happy to help point you in the right direction!