Are you a slum lord?

[John S Lewis]

So, since I've started as a pro member here on BP, a lot of the properties  in my price range are all in run down neighborhoods with high crime.  Does anyone have experience with these types of rentals?  Is it just a no-brainer to stay away? 

[Account Closed]

@John S Lewis

I don't think you've quite understood how money is made in actual slumlording in war zones. BiggerPockets.com doesn't do webinars on that sort of thing.

1. Slumlords receive rents in cash through third parties and hide the income.

2. Slumlords buy property and drive it further into the ground in the hopes that it will become part of a government-sponsored urban renewal scheme.

3. Slumlords do not keep up their tax payments, especially in judicial foreclosure states, knowing that it will be years before the courts do anything about it, and consciously plan to sell just before foreclosure after using up every blocking tactic available to them. Sometimes they just plain abandon the property after exhausting every possible illegal tactic to make money out of it.

4. Slumlords knowingly rent to tenants who are not real occupants of the property, but are rather fronts for wanted fugitives or illegal aliens. These are the types of people who will willingly stay in the house or apartment as it's driven into the ground. The slumlord often helps find the front who rents the property.

5. Slumlords have links to organized crime gangs that allow them to intimidate their tenants.

6. Slumlords aid and abet defrauders of assistance programs to steal benefit payments from the government and their fellow taxpayers.

Don't do these things, and you're not a slumlord. You're instead the last guy who's giving people with extremely limited options a chance. You're the guy whose hand they're grasping to stay out of the abyss.

I think you'd really be surprised how much the most hardened police officers and child welfare caseworkers will typically respect the difference between a responsible landlord of low-cost properties and a slumlord.