Hartford Apartment Buildings, someone is making money?

[Dave Mosher]

Looking down the road, I can see a path for me towards buying apartment buildings.  I hear everyone saying to stay away from lower income areas because of the headaches.  However, I see  6 and 12 unit apartment buildings for sale in Hartford, NB, etc.  Someone must be buying these properties and I would imagine it must be profitable for them otherwise they wouldn't buy them.  With that said, if a management company is hired to do all the "dirty work", does the advice of staying out of low income areas still apply?  I agree that in Hartford, as with any town, that there are better sections than others, but it seems to me that if you want to explore the possibility of owning more than 4 or 5 unit buildings you need to be open to looking in cities like Hartford, Waterbury, New Britain.  What are your thoughts?

[Brian Pulaski]

The boy properties I have visited in Hartford were owned by the Hartford Housing Authority. The majority being the split 6 style brick buildings. I worked for a design/ management company that did a lot of projects (repointing, windows, roofs, etc). I was threatened and followed when I visited the project sites. Things like measuring a window and I wasn't threatened with a gun... I didn't measure the rest of the Windows in that building. I was with some of the staff who would not step foot in some of the properties... the way they were kept (these I believe were all section 8) was horrible. The tenants just trash the places. I'm not sure if others have seen different, but from what I saw a and dealt with, I wouldn't own property in those areas. I have been to bad areas of Springfield MA, New Britain, Stamford, Bristol and others. You couldn't pay me to own houses in any of them!