New Member From Boston, MA

[Kyle Lawrence]

Hello Everyone,

I am new to BiggerPockets and a new investor from the Boston, MA area. I have been catching up on all the BiggerPockets podcast episodes, set up my alerts, read the Ultimate Beginner's Guide, and have been reading along this forum for a couple of months now. I currently own a property here in the Dorchester neighborhood but looking to venture out to the following cities for multi-family buy and hold investments: Fall River, New Bedford, Worcester, and Fitchburg (in that order). I am not too familiar with any of these areas as I was born and raised in Boston but willing to take the hour drive in either direction to learn the landscape.   

It looks like Fall River/New Bed. offers the best market for cash on cash ROI and the new train line coming can potentially add to the cities economic development (although I am still concerned about appreciation in value). I have also read great things about some Worcester pockets.

If people can give their opinions about investing in these four cities that would be greatly appreciated (new economic developments, safer neighborhoods to invest, availability of contractors/property managers, etc) . I would also like to join any virtual meetups in these locations to build my network. Please provide info below. Thank you! Cheers!

Kyle

[Jonathan Bombaci]

Hey @Kyle Lawrence I don't know much about Fall River and New Bedford but we have 3 agents on the team that specialize in Worcester, 2 of which are househacking in Worcester right now, and we have 1 very experienced agent that LOVES Fitchburg. I own a few multi-families in Fitchburg and the neighboring town Leominster and you can find good cash flowing multi-families in all 3 of those markets. 

With any of the cities in New England there are good neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are not so great. In Worcester I like to focus on the outskirts or surrounding suburbs, we just helped a client with a 4 family in Grafton which was a pretty interesting one. In Fitchburg we're investing in the area surrounding Fitchburg state, the areas near the highway and then boarding Leominster. It's important to know the towns but just by walking the neighborhoods you should get a good sense for the area, and like I tell all of our clients trust your gut. If you feel uncomfortable move on to the next property. 

We also have a PM company in Leominster that covers the area, we had a 3rd party manager taking care of them for us but it got to the point where we just had too many units, so we launched one ourselves to make sure things are done the way we wanted. We now have over 100 units under management most of which are in Fitchburg so we clearly believe in the city. 

I hope that helps, 
Jon