All Forum Posts by: JJ P.

Kansas City is a popular place!  As of now, I'm heading to the Mid Atlantic to scout.   If those areas fail the sniff test, KC is on the radar.   

Bill Super in Fallbrook.  Financial Planner

William (Bill) F. Super, CPA, AEP, PFS

William Super CPAs & Consultants

Great insights on an area I'm researching.

These are great suggestions.   

Our out of state network personal friends/family is sparse.  We have distant relatives in the Boston area and in New Orleans.  We're more the Christmas card type of family then the talk-every-week type.   Neither of those places appeal to me for investments.   I have a dear friend and some family members in Oregon, and we started out our search on the Pacific Coast in Oregon and Washington and eventually chose to go to an area with better cash flow and a broader economic base.     Unfortunately, that taps out the out of state family that we have.  So it will be new area.

@Parker Massengill that area is on the radar.  

@Lee Ripma how is your Kansas City investment going?  How long have you had it?  Do you see it now and again?

  @Dave Foster I just ordered The Clipper Ship, it looks like an interesting read. 

Thanks for the input @Dave Foster.  Yes, it's so intimidatingly that it's easier to do nothing. 

 Those are some great tips and you are right about the rental demographics being different.  I'll check into the three areas you mentioned. 

I've been stalking the forums for insight.  I'm finally starting my own thread to ask point blank-- What would you suggest?

We are long term investors currently with Class A SFH in Southern California. We're selling one and will need to 1031 the funds. The goal is to buy 2 moderately priced ($130-175K) duplexes or well positioned SFH (75-150) in an area with job stability (military, government, medical, Amazon, higher education, etc). We'd like to stay in decent neighborhoods and cash flow is more important than appreciation.

 The idea of duplexes (or triplexes) is appealing because it mitigates the vacancy factor.    I've looked hard in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. They are not off the list, but haven't found anything compelling enough to go and see, and the winters are harsh.   Current areas of high interest are the Mid West, SouthEast and Mid Atlantic states, and we're trending towards the Carolina's, Virginia and Indiana near employment centers.    Of particular interest are areas adjacent to Military Bases, colleges and medical facilities, all at once!  

I have a lot of feelers out and would love some input before heading out to scout the world within the next couple of weeks. Where ever I buy that first plane ticket is likely to be the top contender, so I'm trying to narrow the field and not set out to research more than a couple of key areas that are hopefully driving distance from each other. We are seeing some duplexes and even SFH that cash flow over 1%, and that's obviously very sweet. It doesn't have to be turn key, but no big projects with a boatload of deferred maintenance. Since we're out of state, we're not looking for a huge headache or any kind of Flip.

We had a cabin in Big Bear for many years.  The multitude of vacation rental cabins in our neighborhood were empty most of the time.   Ski season and the heart of summer saw a slight uptick, but the peak season was always Thanksgiving Week and the week between Christmas and New Years.  

If you've got 250K to invest, I would do a bread and butter condo.  There are some small units in SD available for under 300K.  You can also look in the inland corridor along I-15, especially just into Riverside County, like Temecula, Murietta, or Menifee.  That would be a little over an hours drive for you.   It would be close enough to self manage and a year round tenant would minimize your hands on treks up the freeway.  

We were tossing around the exact same scenarios...  invest local?  Invest in a vacation house somewhere we want to go?  Invest out of state?  We finally decided on out of state and cinch the cash flow so we can vacation where we want to, when we want to.  Hard decision, but practicality won.  The beach house in Port Townsend was a much funner idea, but realistically, just didn't really work as an investment strategy.   We should be able to net $2000-2500 a month making a more prudent choice.  We can then vacation wherever we want to go.  

I've been looking in Ohio and haven't found any prospects that don't have a staggering tax bill.  I'm looking around Cleveland, and the taxes are ruining the returns. 

Tough lesson, but never commit to buying anything if you don't know the price.