Re: RE investing in NYC. Can I do it? - Posted by Frank Chin
Posted by Frank Chin on September 15, 2003 at 09:08:06:
Ed:
Ron gave you an excellent answer, and I agree completely with it.
There are folks ditching their jobs in several years doing creative RE, rehabbing, wholesaling, flipping etc. But its not in fast appreciating buyer markets such as NYC.
I know of friends buying low end type rental apartment buildings in Jersey City some time back because it “cash flowed” better, and its the closet place to NYC that gives good returns. One such fella worked in Manhattan, lived in Queens
Unfortuantely for him, he had bad tenants requiring his attention several days a week, where he had to drive thru the “Holland Tunnel” late at night to handle the problems, and then get back home 2:00 AM in the morning, and had to go tho work the next morning.
Bottom line, with low end properties, you’ll get low end tenants, and issues that go with it.
I bought properties in good areas, that required good size down payments. It took nearly 20 years for rents to double or triple, and mortgage rates to drop from 16% in 1982, to 5% today to get “good cash flow”.
As a result, I had few tenant problems.
My wife and I both worked in 1982, and she ditched her job in 1993. I ditched mine in year 2000, but purchased an absentee business in 2002. So its not exactly a fast track to retirement.
But we are financially independent.
It took around 20 years. In fact, I’m at home today, surfing the net, answering you, and checking out the new digital TV boxes we had installed last week
Compared to government stats where folks have no savings at age 65, we’ve done well. Can’t complain I didn’t do it in three eyars.
Frank Chin