Hi,

I was poking around on a real estate subreddit one day when Bigger Pockets came up. I decided to check it out and, like so many of you, I quickly became hooked.  

My husband and I became landlords when we decided to hold on to our first house in Midtown KC in 2010, after we had found a great deal on a home in Northern Johnson County that was more suitable for raising a family.  According to formulas I'm seeing suggested here, that property (which had been a foreclosure when we bought it) is cash flowing pretty well. Thank goodness for that, as we had only a vague idea of what we were doing when we became landlords. I am managing that property and I'm feeling great about how well it's going.  It helps that we had been Midtown residents for about eight years and really liked the area.  It was interesting to see how realtors we talked had such different attitudes about the city -- we had two respected realtors tell us it was a terrible idea to try to hold on to our house as a rental. That has made me cautious about trusting the advice of real estate professionals.  

We are interested in expanding our buy and hold business, with a focus on duplexes and SFHs.  We are looking at Northern Johnson County, Olathe, and Parkville.  We still like Midtown, but I'm a bit concerned about the age of the homes and the difficulty of finding a good property management company who likes and respects urban properties and tenants.  I plan to manage properties myself up to a certain point, but if we expand beyond five properties it might become an issue.  We will likely stick to the 50% rule as we do deal analysis.

I look forward to connecting with other investors in KC.