All Forum Posts by: Steve Sanchez

I recommend Dustin Essig an attorney in Washington. He handles all my Peoria closings. His firm has a title company donors all in house.

@Alex Velazquez I'm a buy and hold investor in Peoria, IL, I have about 50 doors (all SFR). Have done a flip or two, doing an AirBnB and done some contract for deed. Boots on the ground is pretty difficult in this area. The property managers won't take on places where the ROI is the best. The few out of state investors that I've seen have not lasted, it really is a boots on the ground investment area. You really need that one "key" person to be here and run things for you. For me that was my daughter and her husband, who I've partnered with which allows me to now be a snowbird.

Main issue is with the houses so inexpensive here and take so much work to "run" the rentals it doesn't make sense to have an out of state investor to partner with. Hope that helps!

-Steve

Chris are you living in Peoria or Chula Vista? Do you have rentals in Peoria, IL currently? If so you may want to join the landlord group there.

-Steve 

Congrats Brad!!!

@Timothy Harbison if you want to join our landlord association here in Peoria, IL PM me.

You may not even need to open an account here in Illinois, I would suggest you run that question past whomever does your taxes and see what they would prefer. If you’re interested and have a Facebook account I can get you into the landlord group here?

Simply set up a personal bank account here in Peoria as your rental account. I have had one for years and simply named it my Rental Account. Question though, why do you feel the need to set up a local bank account? Is your plan to have tenants deposit into that account?

Towns people live in that can afford to, but still work in Peoria; Dunlap, Morton, Edwards, Pekin, E Peoria...

Code enforcement is very aggressive in Peoria, the city is short on money and it is believed they are using code enforcement to generate income. You are dealing with 100+ year old houses and tenants who do not keep up the exterior = a recipe for trouble if you are not right on top of things. Start adding big fines and it's very easy to go upside down very quickly.

309Property is owned by Mike McCulla, great guy and very competent, I believe he will not take on houses in C- and less neighborhoods, it's just too much work for what he can make. Which is exactly where the best ROI is. You have to commit to almost daily management, we respond within 5 min to a code complaint and we are still not 100% free of fines. It's a daily battle, having someone in Bloomington IMO won't work.

Hope this helps, basically if you do not commit to someone who is in Peoria that you completely trust and can rely on, it simply does not work.

Rajmohan,

I'll try to answer your questions as best I can, I love this market but it definitely has it's challenges just as every other market does. If it were easy everyone would do it, right?

1) Properties are pretty much always available, Peoria proper is "mostly" C+ to D- neighborhoods.

2) Economy is OK, Caterpillar, OSF Hospital and Komatsu are big employers here. However most of their employees won't live in Peoria proper, hey live in outlying towns or pockets of nicer neighborhoods. If your rental is nice and priced properly it usually rents in a reasonable time, ours rent in days to a few weeks. Section8 is another matter and it's a mess here.

3) Not really, each area has it's own challenges or nuances but as long as properly managed all are doable.

4) Ahhh! Here in lies they problem, I haven't seen a decent property management company that will take on the "hood" houses (and remember most of them here are!). So unless you're that Unicorn that figures it out you need competent boots on the ground or need to be here yourself. I've seen people over the years buy up these great investments only to leave after code enforcement has levied big dollar fines, they've not been able to rent and management has been mediocre at best.

5) Pretty much zero appreciation...

6) Courts have been pretty decent to us landlords, eviction from start to finish is about 30 days. I'll PM you the FB group as it gets blocked here, don't know why?

In conclusion, if you aren't here or have someone you can trust (unless it's family, not likely...) I haven't seen it work.

-Steve