All Forum Posts by: Jacob Repreza

Welcome! My answer is always the same to this question. Both have risks and rewards so just make sure you go through each one and see which one you feel more comfortable with. We live in SoCal and invest in Cleveland, OH. We feel like we get more for our money cash flow wise but we also have to accept the fact that we only see our properties about every other month when make our trips. 

Also, this question has been discussed very very often so I would recommend going back through those posts so you can see all the different view points. 

You're gonna get a whole lot of people swarming you after mentioning columbus so good luck with that lol 

But me and my team are out in Cleveland. I'm not gonna try to convince you to invest there as i'm sure you've done your research and will choose wisely. I did notice you said you wanted to invest in C/D areas tho so my best suggestion is make sure you know the areas really well as that C/D area can turn into an F area rather quickly. And get a property management team that knows those areas. We do more of the A/B areas as we just prefer them.  

Just commenting to wait for responses. Always looking for handy men for our properties 

Hey @Mike Lopez! @Jon Schwartz is correct. In both the wealth aspect and the realtor aspect. 

As a realtor the stuff I show my family will be very different from what I'm looking for on the investment side of things. And the most important thing in real estate is always the numbers. In Los Angeles and most of california in general it comes down to sucking up the large down payment, low to no cash flow and waiting for appreciation to do its thing. 

Now this is honestly the easiest way to become wealthy. Your house 30 years from now will be paid off and worth a pretty penny but there's a lot of other expenses that come with a home. My best suggestion would be to go back to the other times this question has been asked. You'll be able to see every angle and think of stuff you wouldn't have thought of. 

@Nicole Holcomb is right about the facebook groups. Just type in los angeles and wholesale and you should find a few. 

With that being said, do keep in mind that vast majority of wholesale deals need to be done with anything else besides a conventional loan due to speed. Hard/ private/ cash. I have people reach out to us in order to get "a good deal" on a home but you have to be ready to move quickly and more often than not, do some repairs as well. There's always positives and negatives. 

I see the reason you're struggling so far, and it's because you're waiting to go see the property first and people like us are submitting offers sight unseen with no contingencies. It'll be a bit hard to snag a good deal if you're going to wait to see it first. 

My suggestions would be 1 of 2 things. First, try to focus on the ones that have been on market for a couple weeks. Those properties have passed that initial bidding war phase and now its just on the market waiting for offers so you can take more time with those. 

The other alternative would be to learn your numbers(price, rents, typical rehab etc) in that area so well, where you know what you can bid comfortably with room for error, sight unseen. 

Also trying to snag an investment property first day its listed, with conventional financing is going to be more difficult. You will probably have an investor(s) bidding with cash and cash is king. Not trying to discourage you just want to give you the scope of the land right now. Keep going tho! There's always listed deals to be found.  

 Hi Yovan! We're still not having meetups in person yet. We might do a virtual meetup but we're figuring out the logistics of things. If we do decide we can let you know! 

@Rachel Cutler I completely understand what you mean by having objective data but my point is you will have many markets that fit the objective data. There is no market that checks all the boxes and stands out above the rest so I always suggest mixing in just a tad of subjectivity in there to choose between the final markets.  

Objective measures you can look for:

Rental Rates compared to price

population growth

What sectors provide the most jobs in the area 

Tenant friendly vs landlord friendly 

property tax rate. 

I'm sure there's a few more but those are the ones off the top of my head and you can see why you'll find many that fit that criteria. 

And if you're going to be that hands off then great! Just make sure to find a team you can trust because being that hands off can lead to being ripped off very easily, especially if you're out of state. And It helped me understand the streets and neighborhoods of Cleveland 100x times more by visiting which is why I always mention it to people but 

We're in Cleveland and enjoy the cash flow. Appreciation doesn't compare the same to columbus but there are some areas in Columbus with 300-400k SFR and we're over here in Cleveland getting triplexes for 89k. All depends on the area tho as we did wholesale a 4plex in the outskirts of columbus for 80k but the street didn't look too appealing. All up to you and your price point at the end of the day.

We've purchased 5 properties in Cleveland in the last couple months. Majority of them we got under contract right when the lockdown happened so a lot of sellers were fearful and took our low offers thankfully. 

What you always have to keep in mind is that the money is made on the buy side. If you're buying too high then yes you have some reason to worry about prices dropping but let me put it this way. If our rental in cleveland heights drops 20% (which i believe was more than the great recession drop in 2007 and I don't think we see a drop that large) we still wouldn't be under water because we bought so cheap. 

So I would be weary of buying turnkey or at market price but with a good fixer property you're gonna have plenty of leeway.