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Max Balesteri
  • Investor
  • Fremont, CA
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Advise for starting an out of state buy and hold investing portfolio

Max Balesteri
  • Investor
  • Fremont, CA
Posted Nov 30 2014, 12:17

Hello everyone,

I recently found and signed up for this great site. So far I've been reading a lot of posts and figured it's time for me to get involved a little more.

I recently started my research for putting together a rental portfolio and since I live in the SF Bay Area, doing this locally isn't going to work too well for a person with my starting capital. So I will be doing what many here say is very risky (which I can certainly understand) buying out of state. 

To minimize the risk, my first step is to find a stable market with EXCELLENT property management in place. Recommendations on buy and hold markets for SFR or MFR's and property managers are appreciated. So far I'm liking Charlotte NC, Raleigh NC, Indianapolis IN, K.C. MO, Marietta GA, Nashville TN, Memphis TN and the surrounding areas of these. I'm open to other areas too, so please feel free to throw anything out there. Just please offer some real info for why you're suggesting the area.

I'll be traveling to the 2 or 3 that end up topping my list and I figure I'll only have 7 to 10 days for this trip. So I really need to get the most out of the time I'll have to see the areas in person in order to make the best decision and make A LOT of offers. Now the offers part is if I don't choose the route of a turn-key provider, which opens up a whole different debate that's been covered extensively in MANY past posts. So if you're going to go into anything regarding these companies in this thread, please keep it to your particular experiences and share the turn-key company you used. I believe there are some good ones out there that will provide a good service for fair compensation. It's just finding these ones is tough since there are a lot out there with questionable values.

A little about what I'm looking for... My top priority for starting out is cash flow to reinvest in more properties. I'm thinking 3/2's or larger with around 1.2% rent to purchase, depending on other numbers for the location of course. This is because I'm looking for the more conservative entry into this and also because I'll be financing a good portion without funds for extensive renovations. I don't care to get into this to be a slumlord by any means. I believe that there are a lot of good tenants out there that can't or don't want to buy for various reasons and this is my target renter. I think you would call it C+++ or better.

I'd also like to ask for any websites or other ways to get concrete data for researching markets. I look mostly at government data such as census information and some I get from things like Forbe's magazine. But I've also seen a lot of data on Sperling's Best Places, I just haven't found anything telling me if it's accurate.

On a final note, as I am very new to this particular area RE investing. Please let me know your opinion of what I've stated above. I fully welcome others thoughts as I create my plan and realize that there are a lot of very knowledgeable and experienced people here, that I look forward to learning from.

Thanks to everyone in advance for your thoughts, stories, and information.

Sincerely,

Max Balesteri

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