All Forum Posts by: Eric Martin

@Eric Martin - I've been in the same situation. With a full time job I bought local but got to the point where I couldn't do any more working at the same time. Ended up going Turnkey in Indianapolis and over the past 5 years have purchased 8 with great results. Here's four things to look for when researching a market:

1- Population over a million and good growth rate. This ensures that there are plenty of available houses (with an approximate 3% foreclosure rate, there are about 3000 houses at auction each month), renters to choose from and that the city is growing rather than stagnate or losing population. Good markets didn't drop during the 2008 crash...

2- Cheap Houses. Make sure you get at least the 1% rule meaning $1000 of rent for each $100k of purchase. This should also ensure youre getting about 8% return on your money.

3- Business Friendly and Credit worthy State. Look at how easy it is to set up an LLC, the costs of maintaining the business and the cost and timing of evicting a tenant. Also look for states and cities that have a good credit rating which ensures that they will be pouring money into revitalization which increases jobs, growth, appreciation and rents.

4- Jobs. Look for cities where there is a good mix of manufacturing, warehousing and overall good job market with low unemployment. it also ensures that taxes won't go up in the event that a city starts going bankrupt. (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-05/these-two-charts-depict-which-cities-will-file-bankruptcy-next) 

Hope that helps...

@Eric Martin - there are no shortcuts in this game. Do you homework, I can't stress this enough. First, figure out which market you want to be in.  Second, research the heck out of the area and narrow it down to one region. Third, then figure out what neighborhoods you want to be in. Real estate is local. You can't skip these steps. Don't trust a turnkey to tell you where to invest and what is a good deal. 

Best of luck to you! 

Schools can also help determine the neighborhood. I didn't use a TK serivce and found my own house, it did take a LOT of time and effort.

However, for me to trust the TK company numbers I'd have to do similar amount of work for my due diligence. This kind of defeats the value of the TK for me.

If you're looking for easy, low involvement, and high returns you're going to increase your chances of making a bad investment. If you don't do due diligence or research where you're investing you can't get mad that the marketing numbers might of been more generous than real life numbers...

@Eric Martin- Beaten up topic and tons of info on BP. In general read these two links pretty much true for any market.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/22...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/402...

Good Luck

Vivek

Eric-

Congrats on both getting into real estate investing and finding BP! I'm in the Indy market and I just might have a few things you'd be interested in. If not and at worst, I can help give you a snapshot of the current market. Hit me up anytime!

BH

Welcome to BP Eric!!

I suggest you take a look at the following website:
http://turnkey-reviews.com/
It's a website created by Brie Schmidt and Jay Hinrichs . It's basically the Yelp for TK providers with investors giving real feedback on TK providers nationwide. Brie also does a podcast interviewing investors who use TK operators. Some good lessons learned. It's a good place to start.

Wishing you the best!
Metra