@Anton Tikhomirov, perhaps it will be more helpful to hear from someone in the market with boots on the ground. I can give you a crash course on the good, the bad and the ugly of Binghamton.
Binghamton is something of a unicorn market at the moment; it's a rust belt city with a history of low incomes and low property values. As a multifamily specialist there, I do mainly two types of housing: affordable (DSS, Section 8, CC), and students.
Binghamton University is a massive state school that's outpacing the higher-ups' expectations for growth, and has been for a few years now. In 2017 they announced they wanted to have 20,000 undergraduate students by 2020. They hit their goal in early 2019. They've built a second campus to accommodate nursing and pharmacy students. The demographics and map data don't take the students into account, but they're really what's driving the market.
Low property values and ever-increasing student rents are a recipe for a market when you can pick up a duplex in decent condition for $150k, and rent it for $500/bed (that's an EGI of $36,000 annually for a 3/3 duplex). It's not unusual to find true 10% cap rates in Bing. We have good managers, good contractors, good attorneys, and (if I do say do myself) some good agents.
So... that's the good.
The bad? There are a few things on this list:
1) Binghamton does not appreciate. Like, at all. We joke that it's recession-proof because the Depression never ended. Ha! Your cashflow will be much higher than other markets, but you'll sell the property for what you bought it for seven years from now. When looking for a property to purchase, make sure you take this into account.
2) The BRRRR method is really hard to do in Bing, especially in student areas. See above. Forcing appreciation is possible, but you must be very strategic about how you renovate. There isn't a whole lot of wiggle room.
3) At this exact moment, inventory in Binghamton is record-low for investment properties. You'll see a bunch of options on Zillow, but as we all know, you won't find the whole story there. Covid hit family rentals hard; many landlords are still waiting for their day in eviction court, or have properties that are completely wrecked after nonperforming tenants vacated. This is a good thing if you want to do some rehab, but again, you must be very strategic about how much money you put into a place, knowing it won't naturally appreciate beyond what you create in improvements.
4) We're having a bit of a zoning crisis. The new mayor, like most mayors before him, has promised to "crack down" on student housing. The students have been allowed to live all over the west side of the city, and student rents stayed pretty steady (though they have increased every year that I've been doing leasing). The city just passed a very confusing zoning regulation restricting student housing to a specific area, and we're all trying to figure out what the fallout will be. People are holding on to their properties to see which way the wind blows, so finding a decent student property right now is tough. I can't emphasize this enough: it is absolutely crucial that you hire an agent or manager who knows the area before buying a student property here. One block may be legal, the next block may not be. Different houses have different approved uses. Protecting yourself from any future issues will require a good understanding of the situation your house is in when you buy it.
Tl;dr: crime here is relatively low, declining population numbers don't take students into account, properties are cheap, rents are high BUT be careful where you buy.
This concludes my TED Talk, ha!
