Jersey City, NJ

[Robert Mack]

I live in North Jersey, Bergen County and am looking for some places where I could buy property that'll cash flow.

I wanted to get people's opinions on Jersey City; where do you think the city is heading, the good/bad areas in the city and any other opinions you have on JC.

I am looking to research the city more in the coming weeks but would love to hear people's opinions on it.

Taking a quick look on craigslist, I see multi-familes anywhere from $200-$500 depending on if it's new construction.

Also, let me plug my idea :idea: of having dedicated sub-forums for each state. I think it will be beneficial for netoworking and getting to know your own local market etc.... If you like the idea let Josh know!

http://forums.biggerpockets.com/viewtopic.php?t=17174&highlight=

[Bob McIntosh]

Originally posted by "robmack":

I live in North Jersey, Bergen County and am looking for some places where I could buy property that'll cash flow.

I wanted to get people's opinions on Jersey City; where do you think the city is heading, the good/bad areas in the city and any other opinions you have on JC.

I am looking to research the city more in the coming weeks but would love to hear people's opinions on it.

Taking a quick look on craigslist, I see multi-familes anywhere from $200-$500 depending on if it's new construction.

Jersey City is an interesting place. You have a huge range of income, background, and available choices. To state that you want to invest in JC would be a mistake. You need to focus on a specific subset of JC, or a couple that are similar.

You have the waterfront region, Newport, Palus Hook... Newport is pretty much all towers now, especially with the last few under construction finishing up here soon. Palus Hook is a beautiful brown stone type of neighborhood however it is extremely high priced. Studios starting around $400-500k. Nearly everything is new construction, or priced so high that it would be impossible to cash flow, or do anything without some serious cash reserves to support you for a while.

Then you have the next step back which is the van vorst park, and hamilton park area. There are some decent places in these areas for reasonable prices, however many of them require serious rehabbing, and the problem you run into there is historical requirements. JC has deemed many of these buildings as historical which means you have to meet a number of guidelines they set forth for you. This is time consuming and can cost you a lot of money up front before you even begin to rehab the building. However if you have the available resources, and know how of the JC government there are some nice deals that can be found in these areas.

Journal Square... There are plenty of deals in the square. This area is largely populated by Indian residents. I don't know to much about it other than that as I have not focused much if any attention on it.

The Liberty State Park neighborhood is picking up however because of its closeness to the the water front and the Light Rail running near by. The only draw back is that the Light Rail stops running from about 1am-5am, so you need to focus efforts on city commuters who are not interested in going out at night time.

Jersey Heights I don't know nearly anything about, it would appear from my forays up there to be a pretty rough neighborhood. The same for most anything located west of Interstate 78.

Thats my thoughts on JC. If you want to speculate on where cities will head stay with anything near the water. It is nearly guaranteed that anything near the water will eventually grow (how soon or how much... who knows) but Manhattan isn't big enough for everyone that wants to be there so people will want to be as close as they can... hence why 10 years ago JC was nothing and now its a mini Manhattan. The thing to keep an eye out for is public transportation to and from Manhattan. If there is a plan to put something in hop on any deals near by that because it is bound to boom.

-Bob