New member - targeting Pittsburgh, Central/Northern NJ or Detroit!

[Phil Novack]

Hello BP - nice to meet everyone! I've spent the last couple months in education phase, reading RDPD, Keller's Millionaire Real Estate Investor, many blogs, and I'm now reading J Scott's 123Flip cover-to-cover. In fact my wife and I both currently work in tech careers in San Francisco and J's story is a huge inspiration to us.

Oh yeah, I've also listened to 22 of the 32 BP podcasts, in order, over the past 4-5 weeks whenever I get a chance (I probably could recite the podcast intro and outro in my sleep :).

Anyhow, like J and his wife, my wife and I are both from back east (she's from Pittsburgh, I'm from Detroit), we just got married and we have a plan to spend a few more months in the Bay Area to shore up our startup capital before making the move back east to start a fix and flip and (and eventually buy and hold) business.

I would love to get everyone's insight on the 3 markets we're considering settling and investing in -- as you can see each has its plusses and minuses but for us they all have to be weighed against the business opportunity:

Our likely 1st choice: Pittsburgh -- prices here seem to be in the range we'd be looking for (average home price just over $100K, so our target purchase range would be $30-60K, with rehabs running about the same, though my numbers could be way off...); additionally there seems to be a good rental market here. AND: my wife's family is here and we would have a good network to help us get started.

2nd choice: Northern or Central NJ -- many of our closest friends live in the NY/NJ/Philly area, I spent 7 years living in NJ and the proximity of NYC makes NJ a really attractive place for us to live. It's just: I don't know if it is a good place to INVEST. Given our starting position I'd like to aim for the #s mentioned above in Pittsburgh, and I don't know if this is realistic in NJ.

3rd choice: Detroit -- my family is here, and we would have a great network, including friends and family who are contractors that we could potentially work with. Numbers similar to Pittsburgh (I think), but not as strong rental market (I think). The caveat on this choice is I loved growing up in Detroit (Warren, specifically) but neither my wife nor I have a huge desire to live there at this time.

I would be very grateful for any insight from the community -- thank you!
Phil

[Phil Novack]

Thanks for the insight everyone!

@Wesam Berjaoui thanks and I'll consider South Jersey as an investing area.

@Annette Hibbler would be happy to learn more. I spent almost my entire life until 18 yrs old in the Detroit area so very curious as to whether investors are actually making money investing IN the city of Detroit. I know @Joshua Dorkin is not too high on investing in places like Detroit. That said, I bet there are incredible deals to be had potentially in the city neighborhoods and definitely in the more stable suburbs as well and given my family connections I believe it's an area we could potentially do well.

@Michael D. I would love to grab coffee. I currently live and work in SF but happy to travel anywhere in the Bay Area -- let me know what's most convenient for you. Pittsburgh is our favorite option right now, because it gets us a little further east, my wife's family is there and the city is in a rebirth with a great university/medical community that seems to bode well for multi-families. Is there a built-in way for us to connect offline via BP? Otherwise happy to send you my contact info here.

@Marco Santarelli thanks for the tips and I really appreciate the advice. We're definitely focused on the business side of things and we are indeed moving east to do this well (perhaps me first, with my wife to follow), and the plan is for me to do this full-time relatively soon. That said, I can appreciate the attractiveness of turnkey properties but at the same time, we're looking to get our hands dirty and hopefully do more than just landlord, if that's the best business decision. I know it will be a lot of work, but we're so far taking the steps to prepare for it (like reaching out to this great community!)

Thanks again all.