All Forum Posts by: Nathan Hillier

I think out of state investing is great, and to some extent offers the same challenges and risks as investing in your home market. In both situations, you need great teams you can trust to pursue investments. The main challenge with out of state is not being there - but can be solved by networking, and forming relationships with investors who are willing to be your boots on the ground, walk the property, take photos..etc. 

I'm originally from Calgary, Alberta Canada, where our real estate market is very similar to California. Due to this, we have opted out of our home market, and are now investing in Dayton, Memphis, Alabama, and working on opening more markets to invest in. 

With that being said, we did not open these markets ourselves.. Personally, we use the power of a collective network by connecting buyers to sellers in our markets, further giving our companies we work with more work, increasing the volume of properties sold by our wholesalers, and forming long lasting relationships with these key companies. 

It was been quite the journey for myself and my family, and are always happy to share more information if you wanted to continue the conversation. Please feel free to reach out to me as i would love to share any information that may help you on your journey investing in real estate. Cheers!

I agree with Leah, there is no magic way to figure that out. The best way i can think of is talking with as many investors as possible, get to know certain areas by talking with local investors, and get a general feel for places. 

Some leads I can offer for cheap rental markets would be..

Dayton, Ohio

Toledo, Ohio, 

Indianapolis, Illinois 

Memphis, Tennessee

Montgomery, Alabama 

Cincinnati, Ohio

I'm currently investing in 4/6 of these markets, and can find properties between the 30-50k, giving me around 800-1,000/month rent. As you can imagine, these smaller single family homes are much harder to come across, so having a great team is ideal to locate, and quickly analyze/qualify a deal that you can jump on before its sold. 

Feel free to reach out to me and talk in more detail if you're interested. I would love to share and continue the conversation. Cheers!

Congratulations on being so young and saving up so much! 

I think the best thing to do is increase your knowledge, and create a business plan for yourself. What do you feel safe investing in - appreciation banking on home prices to increase, or are you aiming for straight cash flow and ROI? Once you know what you want to invest in, you can narrow down your options and further create yourself a great business plan to follow.

I am personally an out of county investor - from Calgary Alberta investing throughout the US. My home market is much like California in terms of high buy in price, break even cash flow, and banking on principal pay down and appreciation. It was for these reasons why we left Canada to invest in markets where we know we can gain a return on our invest through real numbers.. ie, Buy + rehab costs, compared to rents and monthly expenses to predict our ROI - leaving very little up to chance and market conditions.

The next step is to create yourself a team you can trust. This is one of the most difficult parts whether you're investing in your home town or out of state investing. Once you have a team you can trust, the challenges and risks are the same whether you invest at home or out of state - problems do arise, contractors do fail from time to time, so having back up companies, and people you can trust is very critical. 

I would love to continue the conversation with you and talk in more detail, please feel free to reach out and talk if you're interested. I'm working with an amazing lady, @Linda Labbe who has excelled my personal learning, experience, giving me the contacts to invest out of country and helped a lot with taking the leap to invest in the US. Cheers!

Like a lot of investors have said - it comes down to your willingness to put in time and energy into these projects, as well as your objectives and goals. 

If you have time, energy, and willing to oversee the project - then value add rentals are a great route to go. This also involves a huge learning curve between working with contractors, overseeing the rehab, and ensuring proper progress is made..etc. The best part, is once you've done a few and know what you are doing, it easy to do more and compound your success using your established teams and experience. 

Turnkey rentals are a great route to go as well for passive income. The main issue i've found is that most turnkey companies sell at high prices, which really hurts cash flow and the ability to refinance out afterwards. I currently working with a large network of investors to create turnkey investments where you can refi out, and still collect great cash flow and gain better ROI than what most turnkey companies can offer - win win deals for both buyers and sellers. I personally feel unless you have a lot of cash and little time, turnkey properties offered by many companies today offer lower ROI, taking too much profit off the top for the end buyer, and can slow progress to achieving your goal. But, you do not have to deal with the headache of fixing up properties and can begin cash flowing right away.

Whether you choose value add, or turnkey, it is crucial to have a great team behind you. Between property management companies, general contractors, and a third party individual to walk the property and take photos for you. If you ever got stuck and had to pick value add, or turnkey, I would go with the option that involved the best teams to work with, and a route which you are most comfortable pursuing. 

Please feel free to reach out to me anytime, I'd be more than happy to talk and share my experiences! Cheers

I'm from Canada, investing in multiple states pursuing Flips and Rental properties. Please feel free to reach out and talk in more detail as i would love to share my experience on how we got into the US market, setting up corporate structure, and the whole process. 

Take care!

Where are you looking for properties? Since you are out of state, it gives you the opportunity to search around and find the right location to find your returns. I'm currently investing in Dayton Ohio, Memphis TN, and we are able to find returns above the 1% rule, sometimes closer to 2%. 

Like others have commented about lenders, i suggest Biggerpockets as there are a lot of them out there that can help with this process, and could consider the construction component for the loan. 

Jordan made a great point about local lenders, and making some exception or adjustments with showing good faith to these lenders. Having conversations with these people are where it all starts, you never know until you ask

I agree with Hard Money, and why it might not be the best route to go through. Unless you have teams that you can rely on to guarantee the rehab to go as planned, and get rented out at the price you require, and being appraised for refi, its a higher risk due to high interest payments. I personally like using hard money when the time is right, but i'm confident in my teams i have established to follow through on the deal, and make sure everything goes as planned. 

Feel free to reach out to me and ask questions, i'm happy to help!

That's great to hear! It's tough to get into this market being Canadian, so we have to do everything we can to solidify our ability to continue to invest for the long run. This system works great for us as we want to do this full time, and want to be involved with the process and continue to do more, for ourselves and others. It's not for everyone, but we are truly thankful just to have this opportunity! 

 Congratulations of taking the leap! I'm happy to hear more investors are interested in out of state investing, i'd love to provide any information that may help you with your goals. 

I completely understand the struggle of finding deals, I'm in the exact same boat.. at least i was. After realizing how beneficial it is to help others, and how it can further progress my own ability to pursue real estate, we've been trying to help as much as we can. The secret, is in volume, and working together. By bringing investors looking for deals to my sellers, we straighten our relationship with our sellers and find better deals. This is critical as i hope to be doing this full time in the near future, and want to work full time in real estate for many years to come. So quality, and volume is very important to achieve my goals. 

Feel free to reach out, I love talking to new investors and sharing information! 

 I love it, thank you for sharing! I ran a meetup last night for investors within my market to share their experience investing in the US, and one investor said the exact same thing; once he started note investing he didn't look back. I love it. I would love to learn more about it because I feel its a great route to go, with way less competition as you said, it's a whole new animal. Glad to hear others are helping you and prove that it can be done. Great information, thank you for sharing! 

How did you find the transition from one market to another in terms of how quickly you learned the rules and regulations? I'm curious to see the process in terms of time it takes to establish yourself in new markets; my process of investing is great, but it takes a lot of time and energy to open up new markets.. establishing teams and growing relationships to successfully utilize a new market. I feel it's easier to work in new markets note investing, and if so i'm thrilled to hear its going great for you, I wish you the best of luck! Thanks again for sharing!

 Fair enough! I completely understand and respect your decision to do what is right for you. I agree to an extent that no one will look out for you investments as diligently as you will, but at some point you will have to trust others to oversee your investments if you choose to expand - or want to stop dealing with tenant issues yourself. Taking care of those who oversee your investments is very important; which is why we like to say we work with people first, and properties second. By taking care of those overseeing our investment, they will take care of us. That's just how i see it, but respect you investing in a way that works for you!

Thank you for sharing, glad to hear you're having success investing in your market! Good luck, hope everything works out well for you!