All Forum Posts by: Aaron Coday

@Nate Burgher, this is exactly what I was intending.  It's not enough research to go buy sfr's directly, but it's a good filter to go do more research.  Thanks for the feedback!

Hi all,

I'm relatively young in the REI biz. I've got two SFRs in my home area (Portland, OR) and doing nicely. Portland's rent to price ratio is becoming less favorable to investing. Yes, their deals still to be had, but they are getting harder to find.

So I've become more interested in investing out of state.  I'm not afraid of it and especially after several blogs here and in the podcast recently it seems quite manageable.  However, I didn't see a lot of guidance on how to choose which city/cities or neighborhoods to focus on.  

I thought I'd try a data centric approach using some of Zillow's data.  I wanted to get some feedback from folks more experienced if I'm headed down the right path or if it's just not accurate enough to guide my selection of cities/neighborhoods.  I know it won't be a guide to absolute success but if I can use it to guide me to let's say a target rich area then it would be a success.

What I did:  I downloaded Zillow's Time series for Price to Rent ratio data by Neighborhood.  Then using it in excel, I calculated the rent to home value ratio.  The price to rent ratio I believe is home value divided by annual rent income.  So to calculate the rent to home value such that I can apply the 1% and 2% investment rules of thumb, I multiply by 12 and then invert.  

now I have the average rent to home value per neighborhood.  Theoretically, a neighborhood that has a ratio of 2% has more investment opportunities.  Then I used a pivot table to sort by state, metro city and then neighborhood.

Theoretically, Using this I can then figured out which metro areas and neighborhoods would be most worth spending time further researching.  As I can't seem to attach a file, i"m adding a link to my public OneDriver folder. You can access it here: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AtyCqhSivSeGkWDy-zbmjprvlhnV

Thanks for your advice/help/suggestions

Aaron

I’d vote for We’d and Hopworks

One thing I look at which is free is Zillow.com/research they have monthly median rent rates per zip code each month going back a few years. It's not perfect though I think it can give you some ideas of what expectations are per zip code.

@Neal Collins,  Indeed they are wonderful cities.  I work in the software industry for a hardware company.  

@Randy Johnston Thanks for the heads up on the meetup!  I plan to go and replied on the post you pointed out

I'll be there.  Looking for are to meeting folks

I too would be interested in any recommendations. One I've worked with got bought by guild mortgage. Guild mortgage is ok but I'm interested to see if there are better recommendations too.

Hello,

Bought my first house in 2000 and then accidentally became a landlord when my job moved me.  Since then, I've lived in Munich, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey, and have a rental in Istanbul as well.  Then in 2015, I began intentionally investing in rental properties here in the Portland, OR  though mostly on the western suburbs.

Ultimately, my goal is to grow my real estate investments to allow me to get out of the rat race day to day job within the next 10-12 years.  I'm looking to network and grow my knowledge in rental investing.  I can offer a bit of knowledge and experience with property ownership in Turkey and Germany.  

Hope to get know more folks!

Aaron