Need a Gun to Go See a House? Might Not Want to Buy That Home Then

So I called up the listing agent for a 3 family property in Irvington, New Jersey to show to an investor client. "Hello, I want to show your listing tomorrow in Irvington, how do I access it?". The listing agent says. "Its vacant and open, just let your self in."

Wonderful, I get to go into a bad neighborhood and the house isn't secure. We arrive at the house in the morning and the neighborhood is rough to say the least. I would say 3 out of every 4 houses on this block are abandoned, boarded up, and/or have fire damage.

My client has a carry permit, so instead of the usual showing where I walk through the home and say 'this is the living room, this is the kitchen', my client actually went room by room first and had to clear it to make sure no squatters or vagrants were present.

Luckily, no one was in the house, but that neighborhood was a war zone and not a viable area to invest in. I felt bad, the neighbors were actually very nice and approached us. They offered to look out for any homes we bought on the street and were looking for work.

After I gave them my business card, they said 'Thank you Mr. Williams'. I didn't correct them, but they mistook my brokerage name for my name.

We checked out another available home across the street for a goof. The front door was off the hinges. We couldn't even get 10 feet into the house, because there was a gaping hole in the hallway floor and the structure was just unsafe to walk through.

Having spent my early childhood living in Irvington, it was a real shame seeing the deterioration of the town. We ended up putting a low ball offer on another multi-family home in town (better section) near the Garden State Parkway, but it was rejected. The area is just too volatile at the present time and hard to predict the After Repair Value (ARV). Investing in this area would be purely speculative and not a good option for this client's first flip investment.

We decided that Newark would be a better option, as there are cheap homes available in upcoming areas of development.

My advice, if you need to be packing some heat just to look at a house, you might want to rethink investing in that area!