All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Hey Jezelle! sending you a PM

lol @Brian Garlington! any advice you have is appreciated! Properties residential and are a little scattered throughout Euclid, Mt Pleasant. Mostly C neighborhoods/areas. 

Hey BP! 

I'm looking to connect with awesome property managers in Cleveland.  Do you know one? Are you one? Let me know!

I've got 7 units, soon to be 12 and more on the way. Would love to find a PM partner to work with. 

Thanks in advance!

Hey @Joas Espinoza, congrats on getting started. Others on this thread have given some very solid advice. I'll add a few thoughts:

House hacking might be a good way to get into investing for you, and you might qualify for a low $ down loan to help you do it. 

Completely agree with the advice given that you don't need to be close to your investments physically. All of my properties are out of state. It does require a good team to help me manage - but I think physical proximity is a false sense of security - UNLESS you are doing a big rehab; in which case I would want to be present to manage. 

My first deal was a SFH, but I quickly realized that to scale and get the cash flow I needed to meet my goals I needed to get into multi. A SFH is a great way to get your feet wet and get comfortable with the experience. Depending on your long term goals and reasons for investing, MFH might be better for you.

Buy for cash flow!! 

Happy investing!

Hey Betsy! Welcome! House hacking can be an awesome strategy to get started in real estate investing. Brandon Turner's book on creative financing (The book on investing in real estate with no and low money down) does a great job of laying out this strategy and the different types of loans available to do it. I would also recommend that you get really clear on your deal criteria when you start underwriting properties. What kind of cash flow does the property need to have in order for it to fit into your overall investing goals? Do rent comps support that cash flow? Do you have cash reserves for repairs and maintenance? There also a ton of great resourced on BP: blogs and forum posts that can help you connect to people in your market. Best of luck and let us know how it goes!

Hey Bracken, 

Seattle resident here with rental property in Montana and Cleveland. As someone who has only done out of state investing because the Seattle market didn't work with my goals I would say it is totally achievable and likely in less time than you are imagining. A few things to consider if you want to go out of your market:

1) What are your investing goals and the metrics you are measuring by? For me, its cash flow. I want at least $200/month/door and an overall return of at least 25% CoC. Having a clear idea of what a good deal is for you is going to help you focus.

2) Use these metrics to go evaluate different markets. Actually sit down and evaluate deals in those markets to see if they line up to your desired metrics. Analyze as many deals as you can. BP has some good tools to get you started here.  Use census and trend data to evaluate overall markets - population growth, age, job growth, industry diversification etc. There are lots of great markets out there so don't try to boil the ocean. When you find one where the deals in the market align to your goals/metric targets stick to that. 

3) I totally agree with the advice of interviewing PMs. I would also say that you need to budget time and $ to spend time in that market periodically to walk properties and meet people. This is an expense you won't have with a local property but a very necessary one in my opinion. 

Best of luck!! Let us know what you decide!

Congratulations! You sound like a seasoned pro, but just to cover your bases I would highly recommend getting Peter Harris's book - Commercial Real Estate Investing for Dummies - he has an extensive checklist of due diligence tasks and advice for how to manage the process. 

Hi Aaron! Welcome to BP! How you analyze a market and what makes a deal "good" or "bad" really depends on what your goals are. Are you investing for cash flow? appreciation? forced equity? I live in Seattle and I own properties in Cleveland OH and Montana. It is absolutely do-able to invest out of state, but it does add complexity as Mike stated and it does require you to have a local team you trust to help manage your properties. 

My advice is get laser focused on your metrics and your ultimate goals for investing: cash on cash, IRR, NOI, Cap rate etc.

Hey @Daniel Goldfinger, my partner and I recently moved to Cleveland from Seattle temporarily to build our cash flow business here. Would love to connect!