Newbie looking to invest in first rental property. Help!

[Wei Yan]

Hi everyone,

Long time lurker here. I'm looking to invest in my first long term rental property. Specifically, I'm looking at townhouses that cash flow in the NoVA or MD Suburbs. This rules out many of the good areas.

The areas where I can find houses matching this criteria seems to be Gaithersburg, Germantown, Reston/Herndon, Centreville, and Lorton.

For NoVA, I don't want to go as far as Manassas or Woodbridge.

I grew up in North Potomac so I'm pretty familiar with MD. The Gaithersburg and Germantown neighborhoods are a little worse off than what I'd ideally want. I'm not familiar with the NoVA cities.

Can someone shed some light on rental properties in these cities or other cities that might work. Specifically, I'm most interested in Reston/Herndon.

Lastly, once I find a property where I'm comfortable with the numbers and neighborhood, how can I gauge how long it will take me to rent out this property. One of my biggest concerns in vacancy rate.

Thanks everyone in advance.

[Adrienne Green]

Hi! Congratulations on being one step closer to being a real estate investor. I'm familiar with housing in Herndon and Reston, and generally think favorably of those areas. 

I always recommend using crimereports.com and greatschools.org to gain insight into unfamiliar areas. There are also paid services, such as rentometer.com, that you may find worth it considering the investment involved in your purchase. 

A good strategy to get a ballpark for vacancy rate is to look at the Zillow rental listings. You can get a good idea of market rental rates in addition to seeing how long the listings are sitting on the market.

Considering your concern re: vacancy rate, I would highlight there are a lot of factors that affect it. Some you can control (quality of unit, rent amount) and some you cannot (time of year). 

Let me know if you have more questions or there's any other way I can help! Thanks!