All Forum Posts by: Dan Mason

What neighborhood? I might be interested

Network and find deals. I'm working on rehabbing a duplex in Brighton Heights right now

All of the above. There have been a couple of shootings in the news lately. However there are nice streets even in bad neighborhoods and the only way a neighborhood improves is when people invest and make it better. Don't let me scare you off just be sure what you are getting yourself into. The Trulia crime map is a good resource

Perry South is not a great neighborhood. Be sure not to overestimate rent

If you don't mind having roommates you can also look into buying a single family home and renting out your extra bedrooms.

AirBnB

Check out the facebook groups for pittsburgh real estate investors. Lots of wholesalers, property management, and contractors

Pittsburgh is a great rental market in that you can still get decent properties for < 50K. The downside is that most of the houses in Pittsburgh are over 100 years old and need some work. With old houses, things break fairly regularly so if you don't have a good local team to fix things, you will either frequently overpay for repairs or get bare minimum fixes that don't last very long. 

If you are keeping it as a rental, it does not need to be gut renovated. If you are flipping it, you can probably get away with not doing everything on your list and leaving some meat on the bone for the new owner to upgrade things how they want. Make sure the basement is dry before you consider finishing it. 

You could try Airbnb and do short term rentals but it is a lot of work cleaning up and turning rooms over every day and it is a headache to actually have to care about ratings. For normal "by the room" rentals it is easier to just include utilities. People will pay extra to not have to worry about that sort of stuff. Also I would recommend keeping the leases at month-to-month so you don't have to wait 6 months to get a terrible tenant out of your house.