All Forum Posts by: Steve B.

@Kelly Jacobson St Rose seems like they keep encroaching on the neighborhood, but I don't view that as a bad thing. If you can get a property that borders the college they may buy it someday for a premium, Union College in Schenectady has been doing that for awhile. 

Center Square is expensive as I'm sure you know unless you want a rehab project, even those are hard to find, trust me I'm always looking! Student rentals in Albany can be very profitable, just do your due diligence and enforce the rules. If you can find a tired landlord you can get a good deal. Look for poorly written craigslist ads with 1 picture or none at all, those are usually your mom and pop landlords and usually older and ready to retire, especially if its a student rental! 

Taxes are high everywhere here but some locations are lower than others. Troy is a little bit less on average and they are landlord friendly. If you want to know Troy get out of the car and walk around, go to their First Friday, and talk with RPI students to see where they are living and what they like. Don't rule out Cohoes or Watervliet either, not as happening as Troy, but its up and coming as well, and taxes there are pretty low compared to Albany.

@Kelly Jacobson You have come to the right place to learn about real estate! Searching the forums and blog posts for what you are interested in will give you the most information. 

I am in the Albany area as well, and the best way to meet other investors in our area is to attend an AIN meeting. Click the link below for more info, your first meeting is free!

Action Investors Network

What neighborhoods are you looking to buy in Albany? Also consider some of the other cities around us like Troy and Cohoes for deals.

@Chris Balestriere You are right about the ROI, it can be good here compared to more expensive markets near the City. I market and target all over the Capital Region. Hit me up if you are ever in the area.

@Aaron Vergason For lower income multi family properties I wouldn't recommend making the tenants pay for garbage. They are more likely to let trash pile up or go and dump it illegally in a dumpster somewhere. Same reason I would never pay for heat for a rental, the tenants will just turn it up to 80 degrees and open the windows if they get hot. If most landlords provide garbage service you should too. In my area in the cities its expected and in the suburban areas usually the tenant pays, unless its a commercial property.

They just passed a trash fee in Albany, $180 a year per unit. For something that used to included with your property tax bill, its expensive especially if you have a 4 unit! It seems to be a trend to strip out stuff that used to be covered through property taxes, and then raise them every year anyway.

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Albany-council-holds-nose-passes-trash-fee-6736788.php

Welcome to BP @Brian Dayal. You have come to the right place for real estate investing advice, all the guides and courses here are very informative. I am from the Capital District as well, working primarily as a wholesaler. Congrads on getting your license, I will be starting the course in a few weeks so that I can get mine.

@Seth Martin  I am a local wholesaler and find plenty of distressed properties without having to go after foreclosures. I do the auctions on occasion if the phone isn't ringing a lot, but usually get priced out. PM sent

@Chris Balestriere Welcome to BP! You have come to the right place to learn about real estate. What is making you consider Albany as a place to invest vs Fairfield county or even Hartford? This is a great area to buy rental properties, if you buy right you can cash flow very well. Lots of stable employment here across different sectors and a pretty large college student population combine to make a tight rental market. Hit me up if you are ever in the area and want to know more!

Welcome to BP @Aidan Forsyth. You have your head on straight, very few high schoolers have your vision. Keep up the hard work, you will succeed! Are you planning on college? If so are you staying local? See if you can get your parents on board to finance a college rental instead of paying for student housing. You can live in one of the rooms and rent out the other ones, it would be a great learning experience for you. I wish you lived closer to me as I am currently looking to hire someone to do my yard work this year so I can spend more time on my business!

@Bennett V. How does your investment partner get paid, is he getting a percentage of your cash flow? In your situation I would work on creating capital and reducing expenses for the next year until your lease expires and learn more about the business. Then buy a multi in Albany or somewhere else around here and live in one of the units so you can get a 3% FHA loan. On a $70k property you would only need $2100 down, thats only saving $40/week for a year! You said the gf isn't keen on doing that, but the financial rewards of "house hacking" are huge and you are in a perfect situation to do it. You could do this every year for 5 years and be cash flowing pretty well after that. Once you get married and have kids moving into a different multi-family every year isn't really going to work, so so it now while you can! Every bank around here wants 25% down for non owner occupied multis, some even want 30%, thats a huge difference in upfront capital needed.

@Peter Stellato I highly recommend you to hire a property manager since you will be out of the area. That being said, many property managers here refuse to take on properties in the "rough" areas of Schenectady. This would be Hamilton Hill and Mont Pleasant. Properties are VERY cheap there but there's a reason for that! The majority of people do not want to live in an area with rampant drug activity and gun violence. Those that do generally do not make good tenants. Not all of Mont Pleasant is bad, but sometimes the riff raff spills over onto the better streets. If you really want to learn the city come up here for a weekend when it gets warm and cruise the streets day and night, you will figure out what areas you are comfortable buying in, specifically the Bellevue, Eastern Ave, and Goose Hill neighborhoods. Lots of good cash flowing multis there but really depends on the street and your tolerance level if its worth it or not. Downtown and Upper Union are desirable areas, Westlawn has a suburban feel to it and is mostly single families. Google image search a Schenectady neighborhood map and you will see all these areas that I'm talking about. 

The rest of the city you can cash flow very well with a multi, not so much with a SFR. Stick to the suburbs like Rotterdam, Scotia, and Colonie for single families. As for dealing with Schenectady and all their rules, @Stephanie Medellin posted some good links on what you need to know. Don't think you can get away with not doing a rental inspection, the city has every multi on watch and will do a "blitz" every now and again to see who hasn't had one done in awhile. Same thing with code enforcement, a lot of the "violations" are as simple as peeled paint on a porch. This is why I stress you have property management in place here to handle these things, I don't think you want to come up from Brooklyn to paint a porch! I will add another thing the city requires every year is an updated copy of your insurance policy, landlords have been fined for not doing this. Don't be scared by all of this, Brooklyn probably is the same way but 10x more expensive!