All Forum Posts by: Aaron Taylor

There's definitely money to be made there, you usually only run into two problems with smaller towns.  One, finding a property manager can be very difficult depending on the town.  Two, it can be very difficult to sell property like that in a smaller town.  You're correct on the appreciation, likely won't see much.  I grew up in a small towns my entire childhood, cheap property and great people but in 20 years it will still be cheap property and great people.  :)  Cash flow is cash flow though, for a 20% return I'd buy in small town all day.  So what if I could never sell it, why would I want to if it's making 20%?  :) 

A lot of people combine the spaces if they can't decide.  If you go over to the avsforum there are 1000's of pictures of people who have done both.  Projectors can be bought pretty cheap used and so can pool tables and couches.  Foosball tables too.  It's pretty easy to get an awesome setup for not much money.  For instance off craigslist/ebay you could get:

1080p projector for under $500

row of three home theater chairs for $500 or less

Tornado foosball for under $500

Pool table sometimes for free if you move it

paint the wall for the screen and add a border, or buy a screen on amazon for $200 to $300

You can build a pretty amazing basement setup for not much money.  

Great story, congrats.  

I agree that I'd rather have control. But if the gain is the same either way (I have control and have to do a bunch of work vs I have no control and do no work) I'd take the no work for sure and leverage my time to do other things like build websites that generate cash flow. Not quite the same as real estate but works on a lot of the same principals ironically, and the ROI there would blow your mind (3% a month, so like buying a website for $10k would generate you $300 a month income). Those take work though to manage and keep going, it's like being a property manager only for websites instead. Which is why I like this thread, I'm looking for ideas where I can save the most time and still generate cash flow.

I appreciate all the answers in this thread.  As someone who is looking to buy rentals in the KC area Kansas side, I've been having a hard time justifying the numbers on almost everything.  When the return is 7 to 8% at best, what's the advantage over just doing the passive stuff above?  Loan paydown, some appreciation, but higher risk?  It seems like the rentals will still beat out the passive stuff due to taxes but it would definitely be on a case by case basis.

Clearly a few years ago the numbers were in favor of buying rentals.  It feels like that line is pretty blurred right now in a lot of areas unless you're getting off market deals.  Heck even the stock market has been returning 15% since 2009 (s&p 500 index with dividend reinvest) with way better liquidity.  It makes it difficult to sell stuff that's been earning that for the past 5 years to buy something that isn't currently returning that.  I don't want to be in that analysis paralysis state but also it would be nice if the numbers were a little better to make the decision easier.

The reason guys may react less positively to them may be because for years white cabinets were the cheapest things you could buy at Home Depot and the other major players.  I know that when I see them, the first thing I think of is "well they put the cheapest cabinets possible in here".  I know that's not often the case, but it's hard to get over that after seeing them be the bottom of the barrel for so long at those stores.

 Try finding some for a central state like Kansas or Nebraska...I don't know if it's a population deal or what but I don't think I've seen one in from either state in all my looking so far over the past month.  I'm interested in the space, but it's hard to get super motivated on it when you can't find anything that's at least semi reasonable to drive.  Ideally I'd like to find something from the Kansas side of KC.  I'm sure the issue is me though, I just don't know where to look yet evidently.

I thought the same thing, lol. I've read a bunch of books on note investing, hard money lending, etc, but it's tough when you're just getting started to know which direction to take. I'd like to buy a cash flowing single or multifamily home in the Olathe (KC suburb) area but the ROI just isn't there compared to KCMO unless you're investing for appreciation and not cash flow. After looking for the past 3 months I'm trying to expand out to the Missouri side but I haven't had good luck getting responses from listing agents so far...need to find a good real estate agent over there.