Invest out of state in kansas city

[Anthony Lynch]

Im a newbie in the investment world and currently living in california, which is way to pricey to buy in. I want to invest in out of state and was looking at different cities. Indianpolis and Kansas city came to mind. Kansa seems like a more solid investment. I'm looking for a 3+ bed single family home for less than 100k as I think it maybe a solid starter packet to get into the investment world. Does anyone have any opinions on the properties in kansas? Is it a good renters market? Any particular areas that anyone would recommend. Thanks in advance to all for advice. Any help would be much appreciated. 

[Laura Williams]

@Anthony Lynch I've been investing in KC since 2014. The market is strong right now and the hardest part is finding good deals that fit the investing numbers. I invest in Midtown/Hyde Park/Waldo mostly ..the walkable hipper younger areas and about 90% of my properties get a renter in the first week and not uncommon to get in the first day. And every turnover this year I've raised rents by quite a lot. 

I don't know if you're going to get a 3+ bedroom house for under 100k in a great area. That might be tough. Some tips: After doing this for a few years now my preference is for smaller houses that get high rent. Those big houses can be monsters and expensive when there are turnovers. And usually if a tenant has been there for more than 2 years or has a pet then all the trim needs to be painted and tons of touch up paint etc etc $$$. Small houses are just much easier & cheaper to manage. Another tip I can give you is when you're looking at areas to buy go to Zillow and check out the rentals in that area and check out how many people have that listing saved. I've found that is a good indication of how much in demand that house/area is. My houses that get tons of saves ..50-60-70 saves I know are probably going to rent right away and if a property has been on the market say like a month and only has 2-3 saves or none then it shows that property/area is not that much in demand. I've found this to be pretty accurate. So if you see the rentals in a certain area are not that old and have lots of Zillow saves the most likely that's going to be desirable rental area that you will do well in. 

Another tip is that I would stay away from high end condos/multifamily right now in KC. That's the only kinds of property that I see a softening with currently. I think there's an over development right now in KC of high end condos. I know of an investor who bought a high end apartment complex in Westport in 2015 and he's getting about 10-15% less in rents now than he was in 2015 plus his places used to get rented instantly and now they are sitting. 

If you're looking for appreciation I would check out the area between Troost and Paseo from the 20's-50's. The area used to be crap but the past couple years there's some revitalization & new construction going on and I'm seeing flips happening in these areas. It's still block by block so you'd want to be careful and do your research but might be an area to scratch and sniff if you want to play the appreciation game.