Townhomes in Heights/Midtown/EaDo

[Mitchell Petras]

Does anyone have any experience with investing in townhome developments in the inner loop area, specifically in the Heights/Midtown/EaDo Areas? 

I have a lot of friends from college that rave about them, and I've been considering purchasing 2 townhomes in the $400k range (one as a principal residence while househacking, the other as purely a rental property); however, a good majority of the townhomes I've seen listed have had numerous price reductions, with some having an asking price nearly $100k lower than their original asking price!

The appreciation of those areas over time are definitely part of the selling point for me, but it seems like the people who are already there must be pretty disappointed when what they thought was a $450k townhome is selling at $350k.

I'm not looking at townhomes older than 2010, and I'm also not looking at areas that flooded, so I'm wondering what I'm missing!

Any insight would be great.

[Jeffrey D.]

I think these areas have been over hyped the past couple years. A lot of people trying to 'get in' while it's hot and drove the price up initially, but things have cooled down. Specifically for EaDo, there is still so much undeveloped land/properties. New construction constantly popping up for the same price/or slightly more than homes that are 1-3 years old, so the new homes will sell a lot better driving the slightly older homes down. As an example - I bought my EaDo home in 2016. It was a year old at that point and it sold for 20k less that what the previous owner bought it for.

I still think there's potential in EaDo, but it's going to take some time for it to appreciate. I think it needs to run out of undeveloped land/abandoned warehouses. It's also crying for a decent grocery store. But it has great access to all the major freeways, better parking than in the Heights.