Investing out of state in Milwaukee, looking for local contacts.

[Steve Vu]

Hello everyone,

My partner and I are both based in California and are looking to invest out of state. We are buy and hold investors and have a little bit of experience in California. After doing some market research, we have decided to expand our portfolio in Milwaukee. We have already researched the demographics, and have narrowed down our criteria to specific neighborhoods. 

We are planning to make a trip to Milwaukee in August 2014, to scout these neighborhoods live, and hopefully to meet a few locals that could help us in our future operation.  We are now looking for recommendations for:

1) A real estate agent

2) A property manager

3) A contractor

It would also be great if we could meet with fellow BP members out there during our trip.

Please feel free to reach out if you know anyone in the area!

Thanks.

[Robert Taylor]

Hi Khang,

I'm also a WI licensed broker since 2004, have been investing since 1999 and have lived in MKE area for approximately 38 of my 40 years so far. I'm not really looking to take on any clients as a broker right now, I'm busy enough with my investing work and just a few serious investor clients that I'm currently working with now, but I'm always happy to chat a bit about the local market, etc so feel free to shoot me an IM if anything comes up. Not to "toot my own horn", I'm a pretty modest guy but I'm very confident about being pretty spot on as far as valuations go here, at least for anything above "war zone" level properties. I also do a good number of rehab/flips here, specializing in $150k++ up to near $1M. 

Yes, numbers-wise, Milwaukee can be an EXCELLENT place to invest, you can buy in reasonably for a medium sized metro area, especially compared to the Bay Area and SoCal, our prices are a fraction of what they are there! Rents are quite decent, we have had a pretty stable economy for decades and we really don't go through boom/bust cycles here, other than end of 08 of course, which hit EVERYWHERE! 

One note of a bit of caution for you though. I've been a landlord in the area since 99, both in the city of Milwaukee as well as several suburbs and I'm not saying that the city of Milwaukee is "anti-landlord", but I think most landlords, especially bigger ones will certainly agree that the city of MKE is at best just so-so or ambivalent about working with landlords. Its a strange attitude at times, where they'll bend over backwards to try to promote owner-occupant homes (which is fine and understandable) but it often goes to the point where they'd much rather try to put an owner-occ into a distressed property that they know darn well isn't even close to really being qualified to be an owner-occ for many reasons, long before they'd ever think about partnering with any landlord, even one with a good rep. I think it might even trace back to our local history of socialist mayors, etc back in the 30's, 40's, 50's where anyone looking to make a buck (like that's some evil thing!) is sort of suspect! Its not that bad, but you really should learn as much as possible about the various rules AND the various unwritten rules as well!

There's an EXCELLENT blog that's written by a local landlord who's been very politically active for many years and has really done a lot to level the playing field for local landlords, without his years of hard work, it would be a hell of a lot tougher to be a landlord here. I'm not sure if I should post the link, last time I did something like that, the BP police came and slapped me down, but just google "just a landlord milwaukee" and it should be top result, his name is Tim Ballering, he owns many hundreds or even thousands of units here and has been through it all! Its packed with tons of excellent info about literally every facet of MKE landlording and includes the many "unwritten rules" you'll NEVER find on the city of Milwaukee website!