All Forum Posts by: Julie Williams

PS @Nathan Gesner It's more about perception. I think a sex offender is less likely to reoffend in their own neighborhood where they are more likely to be recognized and caught, but people don't want to live near them and it could scare off good tenants and suppress resale value. 

@Nathan Gesner Good points. Two different towns- very different situations. One is a gritty small city with a bad downtown and nice, safer outskirts. The hospital is in the bad area and I was looking at buying property to rent furnished to interns and travel nurses. I crossed six properties off my list from the sex offender research. Worth paying more to buy in the safer parts of town. Most travel nurses will have cars. The second town is very hip, artsy, and up and coming. It has pretty bad issues with drugs and crime, mostly property crime, some muggings, but people are buying there anyways, because of the buzz, often without realizing there are problems. Both areas should improve dramatically over time, the first town more slowly. 

Has anyone rented furnished apartments to travel nurses and medical interns? I really like the idea. How did it go? Tips? Pros and cons? I figured I would leave 4-5 days between renters, leaving the apartment empty for 3-4 days and then having it professionally cleaned because of their potential exposure to COVID-19. 

I am going on a short car trip to look at a number of properties, mostly multi-families. To my dismay, several of the properties are within a few doors of a registered sex offender. Some are pedophiles, others did violent crimes against adults, and others did milder crimes like public lewdness. Not too worried about the last one- that's just a nuisance, not dangerous. Other offenders were .2 miles away or .3 miles away. Some were further. Obviously a couple of neighborhoods I found with 5-7 sex offenders in one small area are off the list. There are towns or areas in the county that I am looking with very few or even no sex offenders but the fewer sex offenders there are, the higher the prices.  

@Mason Kimball thank for the response. What company do you use for your umbrella policy and is there a name for the insurance product? 

Thanks for the response, @Bjorn Ahlblad

@Jaysen Medhurst where on earth in CT did you find renovation at $100/sf? 

@Shane Cloutier @Allen Li LOL. Guilty as charged. I come from a family of writers. Maybe I should write 1000 page novels instead of investing in real estate. 

Hi. My son went to MCLA and lives in North Adams and was working in a convenience store in Pittsfield and then one in North Adams. He just got a better job in Williamstown. Of course North Adams has been swept up in the pandemic real estate boom. All of Berkshire County has. I wish I had closed on three properties there a year ago. I think it has great investment potential. It is very hot right now with hip young people, artists and those fleeing New York City, whether for a second home to more comfortably social distance in or a complete abandonment of big city life. It has gorgeous mountain views in every direction, some good restaurants, excellent access to nature and outdoor recreation and of course MCLA and the arts. There is some real community there including farming and small business. I have three caveats: 1. The mico-climate in the valley is cold and it gets lots of snow. 2. Be sure to check flood maps. The Hoosic river runs through it and some properties require flood insurance. 3. Finally, please be aware, there are serious issues with hard drugs and crime. Here are the statistics (significantly worse than Boston's) from bestplaces.net: 

Crime is ranked on a scale of 1 (low crime) to 100 (high crime)

There are homeless and there is a lady who sometimes frequents downtown screaming and yelling, who has tried to break in my son's apartment became she think she owns the building, and has thrown a brick through a window of a downtown restaurant, also because she thinks she owns the building. At least she has real estate investment aspirations. My son had multiple death threats and "I'll beat you up after work" threats from people he stopped from shoplifting at the convenience store. Sometimes they were high and sometimes they were not. In the store he had customers who refused to wear masks cough on him on purpose because he was wearing one. Constant drama downtown at night. His place is small so I stayed in a nice airbnb and he did not want me walking the few blocks to downtown at night because there were some OK areas and some not so OK areas. I was quite shocked because it seems chill and has some real charm and being from the coast and having gone in to Boston all my life, plus having lived in Boston back in the 80's when crime was really bad there, I had assumed a move that far West would mean retiring my street smarts. Most of the people who move there have no idea about the problems. It's a very small city with big city issues and it lacks the economic resources to address them. I have still warmed to the idea of investing there. North Adams, Pittsfield and the Greenfield area are the only real estate bargains left in the state and guess what? They all have drugs and crime. 

@Allen L. thanks for the input. What is tl;dr please? 

@Shane Cloutier