All Forum Posts by: Bob Okenwa

@Benjamin Seibert

What's the square footage? What street is it on? 

Rough estimate would be around $1-$1.50 per square foot off the top of my head. BP calculator or rentometer is a decent starting point and you can drill down on what's listed in the area online and begin to gauge what the price should be.

Sounds like the PM wants to get the unit filled as quickly as possible. 

@David Rutledge

Tempe as a whole is a pretty good area IMO. I lived there for a decade and went to ASU. Worked across the street in the area where Tempe Marketplace is now and can remember when it was literally hundreds of acres of empty desert, now it's one of the main entertainment areas of the entire city.

I'd focus on staying close to ASU if you can. Families come visit college students and go to ASU football games so having a property in that area would be more beneficial as it's also close to the aforementioned entertainment complex, as well as Tempe Town Lake. 

The Arizona Coyotes are moving to Tempe and are trying to get a new multi-purpose $2B sports and entertainment complex built not far from ASU. 

The newer homes will be in south Tempe and may be a little more quiet and family friendly if that is what you're looking for as it has more of a suburban feel the further south you go and cross into Chandler.

North Tempe/South Scottsdale has seen a lot of construction along the river/town lake area as companies have built headquarters there (south of the river) and new luxury apartments line the north side of the river right by the 202 freeway.

You'll pay a premium the further north you get since all of the new construction is in that area. Can't say exactly how much has been spent developing downtown Tempe and the surrounding areas, but you can tell it has to be billions. ASU alone has built so many new buildings since I left a decade ago. Multifamilies are harder to come by in the area and tend to be run down or overpriced so be aware of that.

@Levon Plourde

The amount of active listings are as high as they've been since about 09/2019. Prices are going to take some time to come down as sellers are still using comps from 4 and 5 months ago and that does not accurately reflect current market sentiment amongst buyers. We've shifted to a buyers market and the music has stopped on a lot of listings. Really good looking homes with great yards and "fair" pricing will still go somewhat quickly, but the below average homes in the below average neighborhoods are no longer selling like hotcakes.

I would've put every penny in stocks and crypto and then sold everything off in early fall 2021.

From a pure real estate perspective, I would've house hacked for a few years and bought a primary residence a year a year or two earlier than when I got it in 2016.

@Isaac Lane

It's more work than I'm willing to do to put grades on every area of the city, but if you have a place in mind, I'll give my 2 cents about it.

The best way to learn the quality of an area is drive through it in the daytime. Google street view is helpful, but can be out of date in some places by a year or two or more, but will give you a general sense of what an area looks like. Take note of the quality of the housing and overall cleanliness of the area. There are parts of the city where you'll see homeless people at bus stops and drive 3 minutes down the road and see homes worth well over $1 million.

Places that have an abundance of liquor stores, smoke shops, payday loans, laundromats, etc. are more than likely going to be your C/D neighborhoods. Trader Joes, Sprouts, Whole Foods tend to be in the better neighborhoods. This isn't some hard and fast rule that is applicable to every neighborhood. Just casual observation from my 18 years in the desert.

Suburbs such as Chandler, Gilbert, Surprise, Buckeye will have newer homes with fewer problems, but are further out from the center of the city. Tempe is nice since it houses a major university and there are no shortage of renters in the area. Housing stock is older though (mid-century). Scottsdale is high-end and you'll pay a premium for any property there. Good restaurants and nightlife and lots to do as well.

That's a rough synopsis of the city. I'm sure others can chime in and fill in the gaps. If you have any questions, feel free to holler.

@Steven Gomez

Where have you been looking? There are plenty of markets that still cash flow. You just have to be willing to invest there. If you've only been looking in CA, then your odds of cash flowing without a significant down payment are low. 

There are other opportunities in the South and Midwest where others here have had success.

@Emanuel Jimenez

You can/should get with an agent and go over this and see if they can help you find what you're looking for as the local MLS may have a search filter for lease options, or just type in 'lease option' in the keywords filter for Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, etc. and see what comes up.

@Diego Maramba

I doubt any seller is going to give you permission to work on a property which you do not yet own. Closings can fail for a variety of reasons and the upfront due diligence should have accounted for the rehab and the timeline associated with it so your offer could have reflected a closing date that would allow you to make the updates you want and stay on time with students moving in.

Talk to your lender and then the seller about the possibility of moving up the closing date. I've seen an instance where the lender was ready to close two weeks earlier than scheduled, so I'd start there.

@Rick Petersen

I took a look at what I think is the subject property and can't see anything in the area supporting 196k per unit. The agent is related to the seller so someone is giving the other person some bad info here. There are cemeteries located to the south and east of the complex and it sits on a busy street as well. 

Pretty much everything in the photos show builder-grade materials and the updates are mainly paint and carpet. I'm not sure 110k total was invested in updating the units. I can't speak to the market in Ft. Wayne or anything, but I doubt the appreciation run up in the last two years can accommodate for the increase in list price over the last close price barely a year ago. 

Looks like the seller is trying to find someone to hold the bag on the property and then said seller will ride off into the sunset with the money of some unsuspecting buyer.

@Austin Dickey

https://crimegrade.org/ is a decent site, although crime data on these maps aren't always indicative of how good/bad an area is. I've seen some of these maps show red/orange on B neighborhoods with homes that are worth over 750k.