All Forum Posts by: Greg C.

I am a complete and utter newbie, but I used to live in that area and I am not sure it is worth the risk. In addition to the very unfavorable tax environment, the local judiciary and regulatory environment appears to heavily disfavor property owners — and moratoriums on evictions are common during the winter months. The local law stipulates that evictions cannot take place on days where the temperature is under 15 degrees, which is reasonable, but this past winter a Cook County judge made a blanket moratorium that lasted for multiple weeks. This does not bode well if there are other weather/health emergencies in the future.

Also, as you are probably aware, the economic situation is more dire in that part of Cook County than others — especially as far as suburban areas go. This is not an area with a lot of high tech jobs or booming industries. I remember living there during the 2008 financial crisis, and I recall that landlords had to drop rents significantly to accommodate their renters. I would think that $1100 per unit may be realistic in the current market, but I am unsure if that would be a realistic price during a recession. I also note that relative to neighboring communities (i.e. Homewood) there are quite a few more rental listings in Lansing at the moment which may indicate that property managers are having a hard time filling vacancies with reliable tenants. I could be wrong about this though, since I no longer live in the area.

I am new to investing in real estate, but not new to conducting community analyses.

What you need to do is to gain a basic understanding of the socio-demographics of this particular community. What is the median income of the population? What is the unemployment rate? The poverty rate? Are there racial and ethnic divisions within the town that make one side of the river more expensive then the other (unfortunately, you will see this a lot in small southern towns)? What is the job market like? Are there new immigrants moving into the area who may need a place to stay? Are there any small colleges or universities that may yield student rentals?

Build a profile of this town, and use it as leverage in your eventual negotiations of the triplex. 

I normally access most of this sort of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, but theirs is a clunky website and not very user friendly. I recommend sites such as https://www.city-data.com/ to conduct this sort of analysis. Type your city/village name in and scroll through the details. There are also maps that let you look at variables from a neighborhood perspective. Depending upon the county, deed conveyance (sales) data may also be public record so you may want to look into that to see if any other multifamily properties have recently sold. 

Hi Mark, if you have any probate lists containing coordinates or addresses, feel free to send them my way. 

@Nicholas L. It is great to hear someone say this, because it has been my mindset as well that wholesaling is a quick way to generate cash. Thanks for being honest that it may not be.

Rebekah, I am a newcomer to this as well, although I am in NC. If I pick up any helpful tips or tricks, I would be happy to exchange them with you. I am very serious about entering REI and I think you and I think much the same way. I have been thinking ahead about how I am going to talk to homeowners, lawyers, deal with contracts, etc. because I am super cautious. Its hard to jump in, but I hope that we both can and that we succeed.

The City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have some excellent open data available online (here if anyone is interested: http://maps.co.mecklenburg.nc....).

I was messing around with some of the parcel sale records, and I was able to plot the average year that every piece of real estate (or parcel) has most recently sold in each neighborhood area of Mecklenburg County based on deed conveyance figures. As a caveat, this includes all property including government land which is unlikely to change hands often.

A temporary version of my map can be found on this link, you may need to click the image to see its full resolution. Some of the labels are pretty grainy at low resolutions.

https://ibb.co/0nc2M4S

I noticed some interesting trends. 

1.) Areas along the fringe of the county, especially towards Huntersville in the N and the SC state line in the S, have seen some significant real estate transactions take place in recent years. On average, most parcels in these communities were most recently sold between 2014 and 2019. My guess is that much of this is due to subdivisions of large vacant land and new developments.

2.) Within the city limits of Charlotte, the area around Noda and Villa Park have also seen most of their real estate parcels change hands in the past half decade, which is likely not all that unsurprising to people familiar with that area but it is fascinating to see on a map.

3.) Generally, the fringe surrounding downtown Charlotte has also been a big growth area with the exception of the Genesis Park neighborhood to the NW of downtown where real estate on average hasn't changed hands since the early 2000s. I am wondering how long this will last.

4.) The neighborhoods between the inner beltway and the outer beltway are more stable, but I am guessing that this is likely due to different reasons. In some, the housing stock is generally mature sfhs, which are less likely to change hands frequently or end up in foreclosure. In other neighborhoods, the residents themselves are mature and simply have no desire to sell at this time. Other neighborhoods may be less desirable from an investor standpoint. 

All in all, the CLT area has seen some interesting sales trends over the past few decades. I will be curious to see how the real estate market unfolds as the area continues to grow. 

Hey @Jared Trindade, do you have any thoughts about the rural segments of Alamance County? I know the county government recently invested a lot of money into the new Cane Creek Wilderness Area. I was driving between Burlington and Snow Camp about a month ago and saw quite a few large estates being built along some of the main throughfares. 

Hello Everyone,

I have a bit of a mixed feeling about wholesaling. On one hand I see it as an excellent way to enter REI with little capital and without the need to use a hard money lender to close a deal, but I also can see where some of the brokers on this site are coming from. Wholesaling seems to fall in a legal grey area, and with the number of guru-influenced wholesalers out there at the moment who are swindling people and marketing properties in manner which likely violates state laws I wonder if it is only a matter of time before wholesaling comes crashing down in most states.

I read in a book titled Secrets of buying and selling real estate -- without using your own money by Robert Shemin that one lesser used method for wholesaling besides double closing or assignment of contract is to secure an irrevocable option to purchase a property. For an option fee, a wholesaler/investor (the 'optionee') would then have X number of days to decide whether they want to purchase a property from the owner ('optionor') and if they decide not to execute the contract then the optionor/property owner keeps the option fee. If the contract is executed, then the option fee is often put towards closing or other costs. 

I feel like this is a much more honest way to go about wholesaling, as it gives the optionee (in this case, me) more time to secure funding if I do decide to purchase the property myself or to find another investor if I want to wholesale it. All the while, I am not falsely putting a home under contract with no intent to close on it and I am not inaccurately describing myself as a buyer. If the deal doesn't work out, then I simply lose my option fee.

Has anyone ever conducted a transaction like this before? If so, does anyone have insights about this wholesaling method, particularly in NC. 

Also, in some states it would appear that the option contract itself is assignable, does anyone have any insights on this? 

Hi @Henry Clark, sounds fun. I can certainly do that. 

I got you on task #2, I had some data from Sheboygan County, WI that I was using earlier this month. I went ahead and filtered it down to the city of Sheboygan (population ~49,500) and its neighboring jurisdiction of Kohler (~population 2,000).

I generated a list using tax parcel information that is current as of about a month ago, and I replaced the owner names with a unique id. I have the owner names in a separate table and could join them back if someone wanted to see them privately. I'll go ahead and PM you both lists, since I don't know if it is allowed to post such lists publicly on BP. 

Task #1, I can work on. Might be a little harder to harvest the data in Sheboygan area, will take a look.

Hi Robert, I am new to investing so I can't offer an overview of the rental market but I have spent years analyzing the economic and socio-demographic trends of the Chicago area from my computer and on the ground as part of my work and graduate education.

The Chicago area has grown in a asymmetric manner, with most of the sprawl and higher income job opportunities fanning out to the North, Northwest, and West of the city. The South, on the other hand, which has always been more industrial has seen less outward sprawl. That is changing in recent years, however. 

An area that is seeing lots of growth is the region along I-57 between Monee and Kankakee. The communities of Bradley and Bourbonnais, in particular, are a growth area that were formerly ignored by the institutional players from Chicago but are beginning to take off. 

NW Indiana has been a big development region for a few decades now, especially for sfh developers. Unfortunately, much of its growth was related to white flight and demographic change taking place in the S. Suburbs of Chicago on the Illinois side of the state line. In recent years, though, NW Indiana has become a more cosmopolitan place that is racially and economically diverse. Valparaiso is a good area to invest in and it is arguably one of the most desirable communities in NW Indiana due to its historical downtown and university. A good undertapped market is LaPorte, where it is still possible to find good real estate deals, and at the fringe of your 100 mile search area is South Bend/Mishawaka which is home to Notre Dame and has an awesome and active FB investors group.

Hello BP Folks,

It has been great reading this forum over the past couple of months since I started getting interested in REI. It has lots of interesting conversations and good advice for a newbie like me.

I am a professional GIS user with over a decade of experience. I am based out of North Carolina with a special interest in the Triangle and Triad regions. My short term goal is to get into wholesaling, and I have been generating lists of leads in my area. My long term goals are to leverage these funds into rental properties which seems like a much safer route than wholesaling.

I would very much like to connect with other investors through this forum. I am also open to exchanging free GIS work for mentorship opportunities or industry insights. Most of the GIS available to investors is through free web applications and county GIS pages, but these are incredibly lite versions of the software (ESRI) used in our industry. With enough data, I can generate lead lists and map them using a number of variables (absentee owners, fire-damaged properties, recent probate, etc.). I can also create incredibly detailed comp models and maps for properties and neighborhoods as well. 

Hoping to connect and grow with you all, and I look forward to learning more through this site.