All Forum Posts by: Ian Barnes

@Susan C. Did you say taxes are high in Baltimore City?  I pay less than 1K a year on most of my properties in Baltimore city. If your in Federal Hill, Canton, Fells point, Locust point, taxes are definitely much higher 3k-6k a year, but you make no money buying rentals in those areas, unless your doing Air Bnb projects.

I'm pretty sure most people didn't actually read the specific question in this post and/or don't invest in dundalk/middle river. I own 2 properties in the county side of Dundalk and one in middle river. I only work with programs, I don't do market rent. in my career, I've only bought 3bds. For my Dundalk properties I'm getting 1500+ rent per month for my properties and my Middle River property, I'm getting the same. Taxes are typically 1400-1800 per year in Dundalk/Middle River. Use an ROI calculater to calculate ROI.

It really doesn't matter East vs West, there are thousand of people with vouchers.  The problem right now is they aren't issuing new vouchers, the only people looking for properties are moving from one house to another, and thus people are being much pickier and demand nicer places. Most voucher tenants don't base where they live on where in the city the house is located, they base their decision on the size of the house and how close it is to family and friends.

@Account Closed, I live and work in Baltimore city and buy a lot of properties in the city, typical deal is your all in for 80K on a fully rehabbed property which is worth 100K ARV, taxes are from 1k-2k a year, and your getting 1250-1400 a month for a 3bd/1 bath rental from a voucher program. If you don't live in Baltimore City, you need an on the ground person to run your investments who knows the city well, its a block by block city, and you can easily lose all your money if you don't invest right. Most of the houses I buy were houses from failed investors.

@Account Closed, both, but I buy a lot more buy and hold(rentals).  Between the city and county, I'm buying 10+ rentals a month for my investors.  Typically, I do about 5 flips a year on the side, but the main business is rentals.

Local Banks put a bunch of higher fees on to make up for lost profit due to points. At 4.9%, with those fees its a great deal.  What bank was it?

@Account ClosedI buy more rentals than most per month in Baltimore City and I can tell you that any realtor worth anything right now doesn't need to do anything for you other than write offers.  Everyone that's good has insane amount of people hitting them up for properties. If you think you'll be able to remotely manage contractors in Baltimore City, you will lose all of your money, quickly, it ain't easy, that's why the returns are high.  None of the investors I work for would even think of investing in Baltimore City if they didn't have boots on the ground.

@Mark MoyerI learned the whole story about Pigstown when I first started investing in Baltimore late 2012 through non performing note purchases.  There were a ton of neighbors that basically told me how they were stuck there cause they bought in 2007.  I wouldn't buy North of Washington Blvd unless there is a drastic change, and i don't see that happening anytime soon.

Unless the house is worth more than 75K arv, almost no banks will refinance you out in Baltimore City.  Plus almost no bank I know of in Baltimore is going to do a single loan on a single property.  You might want to look at national private lenders.

Ahh, the typical sucker game for out of towners, show people pigstown,  good luck buying what you think might be nice and is a dump in an area that they tried to redevelop but couldn't do to the amount of crime. All the Real Estate agents bring out of state people to Pigstown.  There's a reason there's so much on the market there.  I'll buy your house for half what you paid for it 3 years from now, so a future thank you.