Interested in SFH in Sylvania or Old Orchard

[Philip Orwig]

I'm an OOS rookie REI that was born/raised on West Toledo. Interested in investing a little extra $$$ on the front end with the hope of getting higher quality tenants and fewer maintenance headaches. Anyone have experience investing in Sylvania and/or the Old Orchard neighborhoods of Toledo?

Thanks,

Phil

[Stone Jin]

@Philip Orwig

We started looking at the Toledo market in 2018 after we couldn't find the returns we wanted in our local market. At first we couldn't decide what asset type to buy, we kept looking at cheaper houses however the numbers were never worth our time. I'm not saying the numbers don't make sense, they just weren't what we were looking for. Once we settled on an asset class (bigger SFH) we started shopping around for a realtor. I'm currently on my 3rd realtor in 2 years. You can use a site like zillow or danberry or some other local brokerage to query the MLS until you figured out what niche works for you, then find a realtor. Since you are a new investor, I'd recommend working with an agent that has some experience and integrity to tell you if its a good or bad investment.

I currently have a small portion of the portfolio with a Property Manager, we are not happy nor upset with them.  Once the tenants move out, we will take back possession and self manage.  Self manage from 2300 miles away is a challenge but it's not so bad if you look at what it costs you to hire a PM(on average 12-14% of gross rents) with our numbers it's thousands a month in fees.  I can afford to get a brand set of appliances each month in lieu of a person who collects a check and calls contractors as tenants call them.  We self manage in Phoenix so we have most of the systems in place to screen/lease/collect online.  The only thing we didn't have was someone to unlock a door, which I now have a few people in place to help with that.

Our criteria is pretty simple, we want at least $400 net cashflow and 10% Cash on Cash return.  The price is irrelevant, but generally our properties are bought between 100-180K and rents between 1400-2200 a month.

Let me know if you need more info.  I think investing in better neighborhoods is the best way for an OOS investor to invest.  I find investing in C neighborhoods too risky esp if you are not familiar with the city.