All Forum Posts by: Michael Craven

Dayton is appealing due to its lower home prices, even on the MLS. The quality of the neighborhood does vary quite a bit from street to street, though. We have invested in C class areas that rent between $825 and $875 per month for a SFH. Ideally, solid B areas are what we are moving towards.

Kettering is a nice area that has a lot of 1BR/1BA 4-plexes; however, there is an oversaturation of these buildings (like rows upon rows). With taxes and using a PM, it was hard to cash flow on these. So if I were you, I'd look at the less common 2 BR/1BA quads that you can find in the Dayton area.

As already pointed out- it varies street by street but I consider it a C-/D area. That said, I don't own any in properties in this particular area of Dayton.

Echoing what has already been said. If possible, it would be beneficial to manage one on your own first so that you can really learn the process of searching for properties, closing them, some rehabbing (if applicable), finding/screening tenants, and managing issues that arise. Jumping in and learning it first hand can be invaluable. This will also help you once you start looking for a property manager. If this isn't doable then there is certainly nothing wrong with having buying and having a PM manage it; just make sure to properly vet the PM so that you know they know what they are doing. 

Hi Eric, welcome to Dayton! We own a few single family homes in Dayton on the east side (the Burkhardt area), which has worked well for us. We rent are properties in the $800-$900 range and you can find some decent deals there; however the homes are a bit older and the quality of the area varies from street to street. I'd classify the specific area we are in as somewhere in the C class. We've never had issues, though.

Some other areas I like are Oakwood, Belmont, and Kettering that are south of downtown. These areas are higher demand and so finding good value-add properties can be difficult. I would also advise caution when you see the 1 bed/1bath four-plex properties in these areas, as I think there is an over-saturation of them, which can reduce their demand from a tenant perspective. These four units are often in the low-to-mid 100 thousand range and they haven't really appreciated in many many years. With taxes and property management (if you plan on using a PM), cash flow can be less than ideal. Plus, 1 bed/1 bath units just tend to have more transient tenants, which can be a headache.

Lastly, I'd look at Fairborn and Huber Heights. Fairborn is next to Wright State and the air force base, which makes it very desirable. 

Hope this helps and feel free to reach out to me if you want to chat further!

-Michael

@Jeremiah Andor It really depends on your specific situation and market, but if you can house hack to get your feet wet into real estate and live rent free/cash flow that is a win. It’ll help you learn the ropes and you can put less than the usual 20% down that most banks would require.

Other than that, buy a couple of real estate books too in order to continue learning as you go. Making time to continue to educate yourself while actually getting out there and doing it will put you on a good trajectory.

@Josh Banks this largely depends on what your interests in real estate are. BiggerPockets publishing has some great books. For a general overview, I’d recommend the Ultimate Beginners Guide. If buy and hold is the strategy you plan on doing, I’d suggest Brandon Turner’s book on rental property investing.

For general mindset and motivation for passive income and real estate, Definitely read Rich Dad Poor Dad.

@Anderson Milfort it’s tough to say for sure. Zestimates are great, as they are a free resource to give you a ballpark of what a property might be worth; however, they are not always reliable. I’ve had a single family home appraise for $20,000 less than a zestimate and another appraise for nearly $20,000 more.

I’d recommend talking to a realtor who can pull comps and give you a much more accurate estimate of what value of the property. An appraiser would pull comps anyway so this would give you an idea of what an appraiser would be looking at, too.

Hello John. I also started investing as a graduate student (although not in STL). Because I was low on cash, but had some flexibility in my schedule because I was a student I used some of the day time to drive around to get to know the market and connected with a real estate agent who could give me some advice on areas to focus on and areas to avoid. I then also did a deep dive into the BP podcast and any real estate book I could get my hands on (BP has a lot of them). Other than that try to make some connections with other investors in the area!

Dayton (and surrounding areas) tends to be a good cash flow area; however, it really does depend on where in Dayton. There are some rough areas that, on paper, would cash flow great, but in reality would be a headache.

I'm not sure the specifics of the kind of 4-plex you want, but be aware that there are an over-abundance of 1 bed 1 bath quads in Dayton (especially in the Kettering area). They tend to be affordable, but I always found it hard to make the numbers work with property taxes and property management being taken into consideration (plus increased vacancy with 1 bed 1 bath). 

@Richard Whitaker We use Outside the Box for property management and we’ve been very pleased with their work. They have some pretty comprehensive services available through their company which is also nice.

There are a lot of property managers out there that are pretty bad, so I’d make sure that whoever you go with to make sure you properly vet them to see if they are legit and know what they are doing.

If you have any specific questions for me, feel free to message me!