All Forum Posts by: Andrew White

@Todd Rasmussen, thanks for all of the advice. Our personal finances are in fantastic form as we are debt free except for our home, are putting away 15% for retirement between our 401k, IRA's and other investment accounts, and are still putting a good chunk in to savings every month. Although I'm excited and WANT to move quickly, I do still need to learn the ropes here, so I don't foresee throwing all of our money at real estate right away. My wife is also a more conservative person than me in these situations, so there is a strong balancing force within the relationship! Good advice on getting #1 under our belts and just sitting tight for a bit.

As far as Mashvisor goes, the tool provides analysis of both STR and LTR, although you definitely have to check their numbers on estimated LTR rent rates. But, most of the properties I've drilled in to, once rent-corrected, calculate returns in-line with what I get from the BP calculators. It's been quite convenient.

Good note on the trips.  The internet only provides so much!

@Jennifer Donley, thanks for the great perspective.  The cheap entry price and high-percentage of population renting make it attractive, especially for starting out, although the lack of growth in the region makes me worry from a long-term perspective.  Good to know about the property tax differences as I hadn't drilled in to that yet.

@Richard Worcester, I just ordered it, thanks!

@Jessica Lombardo I’d love to get a look at that data. I perform big data analysis for a living right now and have been working on building myself a nice powerbi dashboard fed by the Bigger Pockets dataset downloads to try and hone in on a market. I’ll take all of the info I can get!

@Alexandre Marques dos Santos, Thanks.  My plan was to utilize local banks, although I hadn't considered commercial loans.  I guess I thought I'd need to have first gotten a few homes under my belt.  I'll keep this in mind.

I also get the multiple comments about low cost = high headaches from both the tenant and the quality of the home.  I do have 10% baked in to my numbers to cover PM.  Also, the particular home that came up is NOT in a flood zone, but I have been remembering to check for that.

@Account Closed These are all great insights.  I can't say that I want to have a portfolio that is nothing but these homes, but the input from my friends did make it sound like they've had a rather good experience in this particular area.  I'm obviously trying to do my own research to make up my own mind.  They've got alot of eggs in this particular basket and I don't feel like that's my long term goal, but also don't want to discount the area; 75% of the population there is renters so SOMEBODY has to own them, right?  I am certainly after a pretty good level of passivity to the income, so I'll be wary of the strings that come attached to these sorts of things.

@Joe Edwards, It is not in a flood zone.

@Kelly Rastatter Fair enough.  I was looking at somewhat more expensive homes in the Chattanooga area ($70-100k), but I have been assuming that the lower price tags come with tenant headaches.  The long-distance strategy definitely doesn't make sense if I can't get a rock-solid property management team.  It's tough to really understand how much trouble that is when I've yet to purchase any rentals.  Based on everybody's feedback, I am definitely trying to put more weight on that "burden" so I don't get blinded by the numbers and miss something more qualitative.

@Jasmine H., Good to know.  Although we may have cash available to make those kinds of offers, our primary focus is cash flow and growth, so I'd rather use leverage and work up to 15-20 homes instead of going all in on 5!  I'll keep in touch if I land on Chattanooga.  Looks like there are alot of active BP folks there as the post turnout has been pretty strong!

@Account Closed, Here is one that I looked at.  You can see my reply to Bruce Lynn above with a report showing the numbers I ran for it.

308 E Acton Ave, Wood River, IL, 62095

@Andrew Kougl, Good points.  I'm definitely seeing the crime maps go red hot on most good deals IN St Louis, although outside of the city looks much better.