City and State to Start investing

[Jonathan Tran]

What is your strategy around finding the right State/City to invest in? My friend and I invested in Duplexes in Fresno, CA and so far we’ve got tenants from hell. They either break things on a monthly basis, squad, trash the place, etc. We have not made a dime since we started two years ago. Also, the home pricing there is too high now for us to invest.

We are exploring out of State, but finding it hard to know what are the criteria to look for. If anyone can share your experience starting out, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Jonathan Greene]

If you live in the Fresno area and did not do well investing in your own market, I wouldn't go investing in some other place where you will have even less oversight. You can't learn anything by investing in markets you aren't familiar with and you will have to rely on area "experts" to help you which can go very right and very, very wrong. Anyone can invest around where they live, at least in a 30-minute radius, it's just about how you find deals. Metrics and spreadsheets don't fix bad tenants, not knowing local ordinances for landlords, not understanding the configuration of neighborhoods. Unless you plan on finding a place where you also want to spend time, fix your hometown rental and learn from it and find the next neighborhood that is still affordable and find deals there.