re: Real Estate Advice - Rental apartments

Me and a buddy started with SFHs in Baker after the 2016 flood in 2017. You could buy them for $40k, put $15k into them and rent them for $900-$1k a month. Got 5 of those and 1 in Gardere area. Then bought 3 quads someone bought and let fall to shite off Brightside. Rent the 12 units for about $850. Bought an old SFH in Prairieville rent for $1300 and 2 DSLD new builds in Prairieville rent for $1500. Bought 2 triplexes near Sherwood. Rent for $850. Tenants in the Sherwood area were giving our property manager hell. Sold them for @$80k more than we bought them for to an investor from California. Seems to be a lot of out of state investors in BR market now. Sold Baker houses for @$500k also to an out of state investor. Couldn’t take advantage of equity without flood policies which were over $2k. Bought trailer park in Prairieville. Renovating and renting 30 trailers for @$900-$1k each. The SFHs in Baker definitely made us the best cash on cash return. But, the flood risk and inability to access our equity made us pull the plug and use the profits for down payment on the trailer park. The trailer park should be even better return-wise than the Baker SFHs. Will probably take us a year to get it fully cleaned up. Selling one of the DSLD new builds for $40k more than we paid for it a few years ago to have some more capital for fixing up the trailer park.

My partner deals with contractors and I deal with bookkeeping. We have a property manager we know and trust. If you’re timid, plan to outsource the management piece and find a manager with good contractor connections or else you’ll get eaten alive on both the income and expenses. It’s all math in the end. Don’t buy something that doesn’t cash flow based on dreams of appreciation or increasing rents. Multi family is good to smooth out the risk of having a shitty tenant which you will inevitably get.