All Forum Posts by: Bill Pate

@Nick S. I used a realtor her name is Helen Soeder at Russell Realtors.  She is very knowledgeable about the Elyria/Lorain area and owns rental properties herself.  Worked hard for me and found me a good deal.  She really understands how much to bid on a property.

@Nick S.

@Isaac Rowe has the market pretty well pegged. If the property is turnkey and Point-Of-Sale compliant I would guess low 40's. If you look around you might be able to pick up a bargain for $35k. Personally I like Lorain County. The taxes are lower both income and property. Good bargains can be had that are usually foreclosures. While not turnkey the right property can have some serious cash flow. I just closed on a house in Elyria. 3 bedroom with a bath and a half. Purchase price was 19k. The house needs at least 7k in repairs including major items like furnace, H2O tank, and garage roof and siding. After expenses though I am looking at $500 a month in net cash flow. The $500 a month is after all expenses including property taxes, insurance, maintenance fund, and 10% vacancy. That's 22-23% ROI. Now I do a lot of the repairs myself and manage the property myself, but it goes to show small investments in the right property can have really nice returns.

Legalzoom does it for $500. I would recommend doing it yourself though because more than likely your secretary of state has a website you can register online for about $100 yourself. It's usually very simple and takes about 24 hours to complete. I used Legalzoom my first time then just did it myself after I discovered how easy it was to do. I put each property I own into a separate LLC. That way if someone sues they can only be awarded that property not all of my properties.

Hi,

I invest in buy and hold rentals in the Cleveland market.  57,000 seems high to me even for a turn key property in Maple Heights.  The only problem with Section 8 in that area is you are dealing with Cuyahoga county.  CMHA which runs the section 8 program for the county is awful.  I own three rentals in Cleveland suburbs, but I won't deal with section 8 because of CMHA.  I own one rental in Elyria and the section 8 in Lorain county is much easier to deal with.  You need to find a realtor who really knows Maple Heights well if that's the area you want to invest in.  There are sections of Maple Heights that are sketchy and there are sections that are pretty nice.