Rental Property Investor from Jacksonville, FLPREVIOUS POSTWhy I sold Cleveland.If you're a real estate podcast junkie like me, you definitely have noticed the clear shift towards real estate syndication in the multi-family space over the last couple of years especially.As deals became harder to find in single family and smaller multis across much of the desirable markets,the allure of pooling investor funds to acquire larger assets became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.Books that were mostly hurriedly written flooded the market pimping the upsides of this strategy.The argument for was simple and convincing:it is better to own 1% of a large deal than 0% of no deal.Personally,I could not help but notice that the popularity of the idea coincided with the rise of real estate crowdfunding.The likes of Realty Shares and Realty Mogul raised a bajillion dollars practically overnight making it very easy for everyday real estate aficionados to own small bites of a mega deal in rural Tennessee at the click of a mouse.A few of my friends experimented with the crowd-funding route, tossing $5000 into this debt offer and $10,000 into that equity offering.These punts yielded mixed results anecdotally, as an equal number seemed to have great experiences to share as did absolute nightmares.To be fair, no real estate niche is 100% fail-safe or iron clad.Money has been lost in a large single family portfolio as well as a personally purchased medium sized apartment complex.It is also certainly true that in the end, every investor will run out of money to invest in more properties if they decide to go it alone trying to rapidly scale up their portfolio, and real estate is most assuredly a team sport at all levels.

You hear these crazy stories about people expanding rapidly, scaling, growing, etc. and while those stories are cool for podcasts, that sort of rapid rise isn't for everyone nor should it be thought of as the norm in this business. 

@Ryan Stevenson yes, you’re right, the areas you mentioned (College Hill/East Side/Fox Point) are known as “A” areas and are very high priced in this market.If you want to be close to colleges but not pay through the nose, you might want to look at areas around PC and RIC instead - though be careful, sometimes neighborhoods change rapidly and you can go from a B+ to a C very quickly (e.g., going south of Chalkstone toward Valley St).You can get a better price for properties in C areas, but you will pay for it in aggravation and management headaches.

I will also increase rents from the average of $675/mo to match market rents, which are currently around $850/mo and increasing rapidly.

Buy in an area that will appreciate rapidly within 2 years so I can get some equity out to buy more.

In order to cover their losses in the market during a downturn, insurance companies rapidly increase their premiums.

Hi All,Looking to network with landlords in Cedar Rapids/Iowa City that may want to sell off some income properties in the future. 

If you're in Grand Rapids, check out RPOA investment group to accelerate your learning curve.

They aren't bringing in a Toyota or similar HQ (unless DFW is chosen for Amazon HQ2), so the growth won't be as rapid.

Columbus is the only Ohio market that has seen rapid growth in jobs and population.I would be happy to chat with you about this when you are in town