All Forum Posts by: Stephen Sokolow

Hi Leesonn, 

Thank you so much. I just got back with you. 

Ok I have finished some interesting research for South Bend in particular and St. Joseph County as a whole. Using the mls I was looking for sales in the past 90 days. Here they are if you are interested. These are the most popular areas to invest in right now. If you are interested in either buying a deal or partnering with me please be in touch. St. Joseph County 90 Days Sold

South Bend Hot Zipcodes to invest in: South Bend Zips

I am looking to study sales for a particular county. I have already made a spreadsheet of all sales for the past 90 days. I want to be able to look at these addresses on a map of the county and see what areas are popular. Can anyone suggest a software to do this? I tried google maps but it is complicated to show multiple locations. 

@Tyler Garrett welcome to Bigger Pockets!

@Erik Carlson Welcome to Bigger Pockets! Wishing you a ton of success with your investing. I do not know the market at all out by you. I would start out by figuring out what types of returns on your investments you could expect. 

Also you should look into the free webinars on here that @Brandon Turner offers. You can learn a ton. 

Good luck and Welcome!

Hi Vadem,

I would be happy to speak with you regarding Mishawaka and South Bend.

Very difficult but doable. Have you read @Brandon Turner book The book on investing in real estate with low and no money down?

שלום אחית

There is a lot of research that needs to go into choosing a good market, especially if you are not here. A few things to look at I think are:

1. A good rental market - that depends on your price range. You can invest in South Florida and get very high rents but you also have to spend a lot of money to purchase there. I am in South Bend, Indiana where the prices are still very good and the rents are very good. So you can buy a nice deal that will not break your bank account and rent it out for 10-14% return on your investment, depending on how you buy it.

2. There are only two ways to screen locations in my opinion. Either get in the car and drive around and see what you think. Does it look like an area where you would want to invest in? Set up Google alerts for certain city's that interest you. What is going on there? How is the job market? Are being moving in or out? Take a look at the US cencus data on certain zip coes within a city.  Talk to Realtors.

3. Zip Codes - the best data for zip codes comes from the US Census http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table  There you can enter a zip code to get a very detailed picture of who lives there, how much money they make etc...

Again once you have that data I would do a lot of Google research to see what is happening there. What is crime like there? That could play a role if you are not there. 

You came to the right place to get answers though. I am sure you will get a lot of responses to this question

If I can help you in any way in my local South Bend market please let me know. I think this is a great place to invest and if you do a google search under Mishawaka you will see there is already a lot of Israeli money invested here. 

@Mike Collier I loved following this whole thread. Did you flip the home? Great job in how you analyzed this deal and I really like how you communicated what you were doing on here. 

@John 

@John D. Are you going in with a partner? I think the only way to come in with no money down is to convince someone with $42,000 that there is some type of upside on this deal. Can you push the rents up? Can you add onto the property? What type of zoning does it have?