All Forum Posts by: Ian Barnes

Taxes are 1.1 percent in the county, although for some reason they charge a good amount for water sewage, but taxes are by no means astronomical.

St Helena is the old area of Dundalk, and anyone in Baltimore has seen the same wholesale deal your talking about, I wouldn't buy that place for 45K.  To make it nice you pretty much have to replace everything in there from the pics.

Could be for Section 8 or not, I still do full rehabs.

@Antonio Lulli First off I don't know who that is in your photo on your profile, hair color looks weird, anywho, Antonio and I were just having this conversation last week.  If you make your units look cheap and dated, guess what, no one is going to what to live in there.  If you put stainless steel appliances, tiled floors in the bathroom and kitchens, finish the basement, and put granite in the kitchen and are in a half decent neighborhood, your units will rent a lot quicker. Takes me an average of about 2 weeks to find a housing voucher in the city. Only place I've had a problem renting out was because I put to high of a rent on it. @Michael Randle, surplus means nothing, if you don't have a good boots on the ground team, you will lose all your income anyways, good luck.

I agree with @Ned Carey, Baltimore City will literally let you pay anyone's taxes or water bills as long as they get money. Now if they overcharge you or bill you incorrectly, good luck getting the money back.  As for permits, you need a permit for just about anything possible. I got a stop work order once cause I fix a portion of a fence that was falling down, fought the stop work order, but what a pain in the you know what.

@Sherman Ragland, who doesn't get there units certified lead free inside and out? Costs 300 dollars from leadprobe and usually requires about 2k-3k worth of work, and a 10 dollar fee to MDE.  If your certified lead free, there's no case, cause there either isn't lead anymore or its been encased.  And if your from DC, and you don't work with someone that's boots on the ground in Baltimore and know what they are doing construction wise plus dealing with a very unique city, then of course they have a very good chance of not being sucessful.  I have clients from China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, England, etc that all invest in Baltimore and have never stepped foot in the city, cause they're working with experienced, reliable people.  The problem with most new investors outside of Baltimore City is they come in, buy properties cause they think they are cheap, have no clue about construction, use cheap contractors, who in turn do half of what is necessary to get a property to code.  On top of that, these outside investors then never show up to the property or manager the construction, and expect everything to turn out perfect. It never does.

@Sherman Ragland I only manage 2 properties myself and that's strictly because a full time guy on one of my construction crews lives on that block, the rest are professionally managed, I wouldn't be able to do anything else if I managed all my properties by myself.

Wow, so much misinformation on this forum from everyone except people that actually live and work in real estate in Baltimore CITY.  First off, a majority of the rowhomes built in anywhere except South Baltimore, were built within the last 60 years.  Second off, people make money at every level, from low end to high end, its just a matter of your systems being set up and management in place to deal with different types of tenants.  The water comment by Sherman makes no sense, as my rentals do just fine(netting 12%-14% consistently year over year and none of them are near water).  I equate rentals with cars, if you buy a crappy car for little money, its gonna have maintenance issues, if you buy a new car and take care of it, you won't have maintenance issues.

@Meghan Billings, if your referring to Larger multi-units in Baltimore, those get traded to locals first, the only mulit families that go to outsiders are the ones that are overpriced. Baltimore isn't some institutional city, its very much a boots on the ground city and a very small circle. Sellers and wholesalers go to people whom they know first in the city itself.  All the new groundup multi-units are done by a handfull of companies and that's only because the city lets them. Multis in good areas are about a 7% Cap rate, bad areas 10% cap rate

If you call animal control and the neighbors think you did it, you gonna deal with more issues than you can ever imagine, its a risk, best thing to do is try to talk and offer to put in a big fence at your expense. If its in a C or D area, and you mess with peoples dogs, they will confront you physically and it could be very dangerous.  Remember, this is Baltimore city, and there are many dangerous people on the street, and it will take at least 45 minutes for the police to get to you if your lucky.