Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Property in Buffalo!

Hi all, it's been a long time since I posted on the blog.  I'm a Seattle native and have been buying properties in Seattle for the past few years.  The one house I wrote about earlier, along with three other single family homes.  Earlier this summer I bought a seven unit apartment down the street from me, and this actually is cash flow positive in months where there are no discretionary expenses (above taxes, utilities, insurance and property management).  The single family houses are starting to break even after several years of losing money. 

So, I started looking at other areas of the country for places which are "cheaper."  How is "cheaper" defined?  One measure of cheaper is the Cap Rate, short for Capitalization Rate.  The capitalization rate is the Net Operating Income (NOI) divided by the purchase price.  In Seattle, the apartment I bought was a bargain at 8% (I bought it for $612.5k and the NOI was around $49k.  After I put about 40-50k into the place to upgrade electrical, pour a new sidewalk, rehab four units, put in new awnings, the cap rate including that expense was closer to 7%.
In buffalo, I am finding properties with 10-12% cap rates.  I just bought four duplexes (8 units) for $334k (roughly half what I paid for the seven units in Seattle) with about the same NOI.  Well, I haven't closed yet but I'm under contract.  My realtor in Seattle found me a realtor in Buffalo, my realtor in Buffalo found me a property management company, so I don't have to fly out there so often.  Looking forward to clearing $1500-2k/month on an initial investment of around $100k.  We'll see if it pans out I guess! 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey,

I'm actually a real estate agent in Buffalo and caught wind of your blog from Google. I'd be interested in speaking to you about your experience, and documenting it so that other investors who don't live locally can gain an insight into investing in Buffalo. If you are interested, please get in touch with me! drew @ andrew-schultz . com.