Good Rental Investment or House flipping in Philadelphia area?

[Edward Shen]

Hope everyone have a good weekend. Long story short is that I am trying to start investing in real estate to create Cash Flow and also create income for short and long term. I am trying to figure out area in Philadelphia that have good ROI and able to get rental property. If anyone have some good advice on areas and estimate prices on what I should pay for (specifying if it need a lot of renovation or not) I will greatly appreciated.

[Nicky Lisewski]

I'm a real estate agent in Philadelphia. 

I myself have investments in Philly and Delaware County.

 There is a lot of investment moving into Kensington and Germantown (take a look at Jumpstart Germantown and Jumpstart Kensington). 

There are lots of opportunity in the Philadelphia area, but it depends on what you are looking for. For example, I've seen some successful flips in Port Richmond - properties that were bought in the low 100s and sold for high 200s to low 300s. I've also seen some nice flips in Bucks County, but the price to get in is higher as well as the potential for profit. 

As far as buy and hold, the best cap rates are in the up and coming neighborhoods. Are you comfortable with Section 8? Are you going to do your own property management? 

I highly recommend the real estate investor organizations - DIG and DPI. They have some great education programs and you can see what other people are doing and figure out your comfort zone.