All Forum Posts by: Jeff Deville

I'm new, and it appears that my immediate area doesn't really support cash flow properties, so I'm trying to figure out where else to look. It sure seems like a heat map of Rent / Property Price differentials would be a great first filter. Is there another metric out there that would be better? Does something like this exist?

I was originally going to ask if there was a way to view Cap rates on a map, but it sounds like that might be a more 'game-able' metric.

Thanks for the insight @Andrew Cordle

::Newbie Alert::

I'm likely the least experienced person who is likely to reply, but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway. (I read that the best way to get the right answer to a question on the internet is to post the wrong answer)

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That said, I do disagree with Jon. Not the part about your house being a liability, I figure most of us read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and probably buy his take on that. But to the part that you should want to pay it off. As Jon pointed out, you have to pay a lot for a house in upkeep and taxes whether it's paid off or not. So how does paying off just the one portion of it make any difference? How can you get into the 'I'(Investor) portion of the cash flow quadrant if you wait to pay off your house entirely before you can invest anything?

I do agree that you need to make sure you can cover your bets' downsides. A lot of real estate investors lost a ton in '08, and you'll need to gauge what your downside is, and whether your job can help you accommodate such an eventuality, but it seems like the more down payments you can make on cash-flow generating properties, the better off you're likely to be.

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Please, feel free to tear my reasoning apart. It'd be cheaper to learn this way than to discover through experience. (I'm in a similar position as Nathan, and presently intend to follow my advice)

Hi Nathan, welcome. I'm also a neighbor (Ardmore), and in a similar position experience-wise (and apparently life wise. My son looks about your daughter's age). Let me know if I can help in any way.

Thanks Hilary, It sounds like you are referring to a CRM, for which I've seen a fair bit of discussion. I was mildly surprised not to see SugardCRM mentioned. At least in other industries, it's very popular. Do you have one you recommend? I was thinking more along the lines of helping me get started with where to look and how to compare properties. I see you replied to the post on: http://constructionpermits.phl.io/ This is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about. Looking to try to find places that would make sense for renting, I was hoping to find a site that looked exactly like contructionpermits, but that showed the differential between mortgage rates and rental rates in an area. (Does that make sense, or is there a factor I'm not considering?)

Hi Rick, thanks for the welcome. I think that we're looking for buy and rent, or perhaps lease stuff initially, but I've heard that it's not good to have only 1 exit strategy per property. I've got some money tied up at the moment anyway, so it'll probably be a few months before I'm ready to pull the trigger on something. Which is convenient because I figure it'll take at least that long before I know enough to have confidence that I'm doing something intelligent.

Any thoughts on how this info might be usable?

Hello all,

I thought my fellow Philadelphia investors might be interested in knowing that the city of Philadelphia has recently released a website and a data feed that exposes a lot of info that might be useful in identifying potential investment properties in the city. Check out the article here:

streamline solutions open data

I'm new (my intro here: ), and wholly inexperienced with real estate investing. And as a result, I am not really set up to know how to leverage this information yet. But if you are, and you need any help accessing it at an api level to help you quickly find potential homes to target, please let me know. Perhaps I can help with the tech angle, and learn more about investing in the process from some of you who are more experienced.

Absolutely,@Joe Fairless Let me know how I can help.

Hi Chris,

Welcome to the community (from someone who hasn't been on much longer than you). I'm utterly new to real estate still, but I am a tech guy, so can contribute and consult in that way.

Welcome

Jeff

Hi Brian, sounds like we're in a similar spot, experientially and geographically. I'm in Ardmore. Make sure you check out the podcasts. Great stuff.