All Forum Posts by: George Wines

Im looking to analyze a large number of marketplaces to identify which one I would like to invest in. I love combing through data and I have defined the different attributes I want to see for cities. I dont know and havent been able to find good websites where I can pull this data from. Can you reply with where you have gotten this data from (ideally freely) or other city attributes you think should be included and why?

I thought there was a BP podcast above this a while ago, but I couldnt find it. I tried the below websites, but they dont have the data points I am looking for, pulling data is manual, and the data is not sliced by year (cant look back into history)

https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/denver-co-population
https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0820000-denver-co/
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/denvercountycolorado
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/denver-co/#about

Ideal marketplace data points are grouped into three categories: people, jobs, housing

People: City, year, population, forecasted population growth, median age

Jobs: job count, job diversity, forecasted job growth, median income, poverty %, crime rate

Housing: housing units, median house price, median gross rent, number of building permits

@Andrew Brady

3 different mortgage companies telling you no definitely hurts, but you should talk to more. In general, bigger companies plan on reselling the loans to Fannie or Freddie and need to have the loans fit into specific criteria regarding customer risk and home values. Smaller or local (to the area you are buying in) companies are more likely to be more flexible with lending since they will keep the loan on their own books. In general, try more mortgage companies.

Im there with you with keeping your wife off of the loan so you can get more loans before needing to get portfolio loans. My wife and I are doing the same thing.

I have done some private money funding in the past and am open to funding more deals. Feel free to DM me if you are interested.

Thanks for weighing in guys.

Sylvia B. Thanks for the note about Arkansas. It did strike me as odd that it was listed as one of the top landlord friendly states in several articles but listed near the worst landlord friendly states from article 6.

I am trying to revive this thread here. More articles/data from potentially newer sources

This post marks the start of a journey to decide what state then area is the best place to invest in buy and holds. In general there are many criteria to consider when deciding what area to invest in like cash on cash return (cashflow v. appreciation), school quality, crime rate, etc. Since my risk appetite is not one for large losses (even if rare), there is one piece of data would overrule all the other commonly talked about data points when deciding the best area to invest in, landlord-tenant laws. In particular, how difficult/lengthy is it from the time a tenant stops paying rent to when they are evicted and the search for a new tenant can begin. Even with great tenant screening, if you have enough doors and your investing career is extended on a long enough timeline, you will need to evict a tenant. I dont have experience with being a landlord in any state aside from Colorado and I have not yet had to evict a tenant.

There are several articles below which show similar top states that are landlord friendly repeatedly. Whether those articles equate to an echo chamber is up to the reader to decide. I figured that I would create this one stop shop for landlord-tenant laws ranking by state and let the more experienced audience of the forum chime in with their more specific knowledge to either strike out a state that is marked landlord friendly or talk up a state that is marked as tenant friendly. Thanks for your input.

Article 1

Texas

Indiana

Colorado

Arizona

Florida

Article 2

Texas

Indiana

Colorado

Arizona

Florida

Kentucky

Georgia

Mississippi

Article 3

Texas

Indiana

Colorado

Georgia

Kentucky

Article 4

Arizona

Texas

Indiana

Florida

Colorado

Article 5

Landlord friendly eviction in priority order:

Colorado

South Dakota

Georgia

Montana

West Virginia

Tenant friendly eviction in priority order:

Maryland

Massachusetts

Pennsylvania

Tennessee

Vermont

Article 6 (full 50 state rankings with more specifics to why the states are ranked this way)

Ranked from most landlord friendly to least

West Virginia

North Carolina

Georgia

Wyoming

Louisiana

Idaho

Mississippi

Colorado

Ohio

Indiana

Florida

New York

Alabama

Illinois

Texas

South Carolina

Connecticut

Missouri

Maryland

Virginia

Utah

Michigan

New Mexico

North Dakota

Oklahoma

Iowa

Wisconsin

Tennessee

Kentucky

Montana

Massachusetts

California

Pennsylvania

New Jersey

New Hampshire

Minnesota

Washington

South Dakota

Kansas

Nevada

Maine

Alaska

Oregon

Nebraska

DC

Arizona

Rhode Island

Delaware

Hawaii

Vermont

Eviction Data

Since laws around eviction are potentially the most costly for a landlord, it warrants a look at state/area eviction data. This provides an interesting data point from two lenses when looking at whether a state is landlord friendly. Areas with high eviction rates/counts are areas with a lower quality tenant base. The other side of that coin is that areas with low eviction rates/counts may be low because the lawful process of eviction is so tenant friendly that landlords do not execute it as often as the higher eviction areas with swifter due process. It is not clear to me how to interpret this data without more context, like from the above sites.

The data easily manipulated The data reported by this site are admittedly not perfect. Their data does not include cash for keys or illegal lockout scenarios as part of the eviction rate/count. Their report shows more details as to how the eviction data was calculated.

List of states with simple landlord/tenant laws

Alabama

Alaska

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Idaho

Indiana

Iowa

Kentucky

Maine

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

New Hampshire

North Carolina

Ohio

Oregon

Rhode Island

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

@Natalie, what is he income limit to claim passive losses? I assume the answer is some form of it depends, so can you link to where you are determining the limits?

Thank you!

My family is looking to either sell or upgrade and sell a house in the town of Stamford, CT. Since this isnt my house and I live in the Denver area and am more familiar with that market, I am looking for somebody more familiar with the Stamford market. The house is a 2/2 with a finished basement but it has a lot of asbestos and some knob and tube wiring. To get the market rate for the house, I am curious to know if it would be worth the time and money to try to hire contractors to improve it to sell it or whether it would just be simpler to sell it to an investor or below market rate. I dont know what the standards of the area are for level of finishings and whether it would need only a bit of work or much more.

On a separate note, this property has not been lived in for many years by the owner so it doesnt quailfy for the 2 of the last 5 years tax exclusion. The owner is open to the possibility of owner financing, but I dont know if that is a standard thing around here.

Is there somebody out there that would be willing to advise my family on commercial prices of houses in the area, the amount of time/money required to fix it up if we went that direction, and how to go about owner financing?

@JD Martin I think you were forgetting that the price of an asset is determined by the perception of value and that could change in lock step if panic strikes. Also talking about watching where the money is flowing with your inference that price movements are like water that is moving is not really correct. That idea does not take into account leverage or bankruptcy. Basically, the amount of water in the (investment) pool is not a fixed amount. So you cant always say that when one goes down, the others will be bouyed.

When you said...

"There might be sympathy in the investments you illustrated - bonds and real estate both falling, for example - but that fall, unless those pulling their money out of those vehicles are stuffing their mattresses, is going to buoy something else. It's more a matter of figuring out what is being chased."

I have to agree with @JD Martin. Liquidity will protect you in a downturn. 

If you are chasing yield however, then you would want to buy some sort of asset that goes up when RE or the stock market goes down. In my mind, that is heavy metals and maybe some sort of treasury or muni bond (if you think interest rates wont go up). I disagree with @Henry J. saying to invest in a gold/heavy metal ETF as an ETF will track closer with the market than buying the actual commodity. If you are like myself (and a lot of millenials) though, you dont want to actually safeguard some commodity that can be stolen from you. In that case you could go with a place like the Perth (Australia) Mint that can hold the bullion for you (if you trust that the system wont entirely collapse in the next downturn). I have gold bullion stored there. Pros: no monthly/yearly fees, Cons: Large upfront fee; complicates US taxes since it is an out of US investment (but with a government bank so not as bad as it could be).

Either way, I would recommend liquidity

Those articles are surprising to me as well. I was thinking the same way as @Scott Trench but maybe we are both falling victim to anecdotal evidence (both of us from the Denver area) and interact mostly with other people who live near to us (in the urban core)