All Forum Posts by: Polly Feeney

Someone talk sense to me please.  

There is a home that appeared on the market recently that I would REALLY love to move into.  Surprisingly for the location and the quality of home, it's not too expensive.  My home is worth about 400k and the asking on this home is about 540k but I feel like this is twice the home and it backs up to a lake!  It's in a great location closer to everything etc...  

I have about 200k equity in my current home.  Very tempted to pull the trigger on this home with the justification that my market is one of the healthier markets in the country.... Denver Colorado type market where over the long term you will appreciate and in this area the appreciation has been fairly substantial.  (My home price went from 350k in 2015 to a estimate of 420k now but I'd say 400k to be more realistic)  Also I currently have my home on a 15 note.  (I could put the new purchase on a 30 year and it wouldn't be much different than what I'm paying now)  

I am trying to get into real estate investing and I only have 35k right now. I'm saving up currently. I'm sure the smart thing is to just keep trucking along, save money and pay off my current home in 9 more years and maybe look into a HELOC to use some of this equity for the impending (as most predict) market downturn. Put my money in other markets that make more sense with buy and hold with the BRRRR method that will give me better ROI.

Thanks in advance for your comments and / or advice.  

I'm looking for books, articles etc on how to choose a real estate market.  How do you determine this?  What process do you use to evaluate certain areas of the country?  I think it's pretty hard to make money for buy and hold in my area and that is what I am primarily looking to do.  

I know that population growth, jobs, economy are involved but how do you get information to evaluate these things? Does anyone know a good system of determining where a good place to invest is? What areas will grow in the coming years? Where you can find good buy to rent ratios for buy and hold or BRRRR strategy?

Where to invest?  This is the million dollar question for me.  I seem to be stuck here.  I've been lurking on this site a bit, listening to some podcasts and reading some real estate books but I need to focus on an area at this point.  I really don't even know where to begin except for the "midwest" which still seems like a huge area to try to zero in on.    

I'd like to find a place where the cost of the homes aren't incredibly high since I don't have a ton of money to throw around at this point and with rumors of a pending downturn on the horizon. I'd like to find an area that at least has a possibility of appreciation and an area that I can BRRRR. Is there a method of determining where a good place would be?

Any help would be greatly appreciated especially if anyone has a method of how they determined what area they chose.