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All Forum Posts by: Helen Jiang

Helen Jiang has started 1 posts and replied 4 times.

Post: OOS Investment -- which city in midwest should I start with?

Helen Jiang
Pro Member
Posted
  • Investor
  • Los Angeles
  • Posts 4
  • Votes 2
Quote from @Gary Swank:

I'm happy to chat about Pittsburgh...lived here all my life.


 Thanks, Gary! I'll reach out if I decide to look at Pittsburgh. 

Post: OOS Investment -- which city in midwest should I start with?

Helen Jiang
Pro Member
Posted
  • Investor
  • Los Angeles
  • Posts 4
  • Votes 2
Quote from @Joseph Cornwell:

@Helen Jiang I am happy to chat about Cincinnati and the opportunities here. If you have any questions feel free to connect, best of luck on your search! 


 Thanks, Joseph! I'm interested in Cincinnati. I will reach out to you later!

Post: OOS Investment -- which city in midwest should I start with?

Helen Jiang
Pro Member
Posted
  • Investor
  • Los Angeles
  • Posts 4
  • Votes 2
Quote from @Nicholas L.:

@Helen Jiang

This question gets asked all the time, especially by folks based in California / LA like you are.  Just search for other threads, and you'll see many recommendations and lots of information on some of the places you mentioned.

For example, I own some rentals in Pittsburgh.  I would not at all consider Pittsburgh a "college town" the way, say, State College PA is. Rather, Pittsburgh is the center of Allegheny County and its own metro area, and has 300k people and lots of other industries.  Yes, there has been a huge population decrease since the 1960s.  I'm watching this too.  The pace of the decrease has slowed recently, and Allegheny County actually grew slightly between 2010 and 2020.  I don't know what's going to happen in the next 10 years.  It's a tough market to invest in - the housing stock is extremely old and there is tremendous variability within and among neighborhoods.

With all that said, I always recommend that folks at least try to get started in a market they can drive to. Why? Because you can go look at properties in person; go to REIA meetings in person; network in person; meet agents in person; take other investors to coffee in person; etc. Yes, no California market is going to be as cheap as Cleveland. Or Pittsburgh. But OOS investing is not an automatic slam dunk. What about Riverside County or another place within a couple hours of you? You could at least start with the activities I mentioned and see what happens. If you still feel like it's too expensive, you haven't lost anything and you've probably learned a bunch and made a bunch of contacts.

Thoughts?

Hi, Nicholas -- Sorry for the late reply, and thanks very much for your thoughtful comment! 
Unfortunately, the Cali market that I could drive to is not going to cash flow well. Otherwise, I need to drive a few hours away, which would be no different compared to OOS investment.  Also, I'd rather invest in a bigger market (population-wise) than those drivable small SoCal markets. Thanks for your recommendation though. I see the logistics behind it! 

Post: OOS Investment -- which city in midwest should I start with?

Helen Jiang
Pro Member
Posted
  • Investor
  • Los Angeles
  • Posts 4
  • Votes 2

Hi all! I'm new to the forum and just starting to look into OOS investing. 

My husband and I live in Los Angeles. We are looking for high cash flow areas with the potential to grow steadily (not depreciate at least, hopefully, a stable market for long-term growth over time) I'm narrowing down cities to Indianapolis, OH cities Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. Other areas that draw my interest are: San Antonio, Huntsville, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

As you can see it's all around...we don't have any local connections to these specific markets; studying all different cities and choosing our next move market is overwhelming... I would appreciate any advice you could provide! :)

As for OH, Cleveland's housing price is the lowest and generates the highest cash flow. It's very appealing, but it doesn't have much appreciation. It makes me wonder if we should sacrifice some cash flow but choose Columbus/Cincinnati for both cash flow and appreciation potential. 

Also, it seems that Ohio's property tax is quite high. For this reason, is Indianapolis a better choice? 

Any reason we should choose Indianapolis over Ohio? It gets mentioned a lot, and I looked into the market really like it as well. :)

I'm very interested in Texas, but its property tax is so high. Regarding cash flow, San Antonio seems to make more sense than other cities, but in general, should we just go to texas for appreciation purposes? For cash flow, should we still consider San Antonio or only look into the midwest? 

Any opinions on Pittsburg? I'm only interested because it's a college town. Is it too slow for long-term holding tho? I have seen a huge population decrease over the past decades. 

My goal is to choose a market that is good for both long-term buy and hold strategy with good cash flow, also I'm considering working on fixer-upper deals and Brrrr in that market; adding this into the consideration, plus the extremely high-interest rate right now...which is a good market to enter? Many thanks for any of your input, fellow investors!