I met with a professional home rehabber yesterday and he was kind enough to buy me lunch. (I had the taco salad with no duck.) Afterwards we toured a couple of his properties and I came away impressed. These are houses in blue collar neighborhoods that have always been known as rental neighborhoods. At least in my mind. He puts in new windows, carpet, paint, heating & air conditioning as well as a roof if it needs it. Many of his properties are Section 8 with the Kansas City Housing Authority (ugh) but he is getting $850 per month for rents. Cost after rehab? About $62,500. He guarantees the first year’s rent, does the property management for free and has them occupied by closing. Call me at 913.568.1579 if you want questions answered.- I’ve been revamping one of my websites that I use for mostly “regular” home buyers and sellers. It’s over at www.olathekansascityrealestate.com. Give it a visit and let me know what you think. It’s still a work in progress.
- Working on bringing you another real estate investor interview for tomorrow. It’s just about ready.
- Working on a HUD owned home where I represent the buyers. I had forgotten how ridiculous with procedure they were.
- Remember, there must be 50 ways to leave your lover.
Category Archives: Kansas City Real Estate
Kansas City Real Estate Bits and Pieces
Positive Appreciation In Kansas And Missouri
Sorry California. Too bad, Florida. Nevada, close your eyes. Last Thursday the government’s index for housing stated that Kansas had appreciation in the first quarter of 2008 was 2.7%. Missouri was 1.7%. And the Kansas City area housing prices were up “a little less than 1 percent in the first quarter.” (This is as compared to the first quarter of 2007.)
I’ve said it here over and over and over again. Some people are still not getting the message. Kansas City real estate investment property is a safe haven. Not full proof. Not perfect. In great years we might get 7%-10% growth. But in bad years we may only decline slightly or still manage to pull out very modest gains.
Think about that. Forty-three states lost value. Kansas and Missouri housing chose not to participate. What’s the old saying: “Slow and steady wins the race.”
Filed under Kansas City, Kansas City Real Estate, Real Estate Investing
Kansas City Multi-Family Housing Sales
Be forewarned:This is a blatant advertisement to promote using Chris Lengquist to help you buy or sell Kansas City Multi-Family Housing.
Why:You get the best of both worlds. A residential real estate agent that works with residential investment property every day and also works with commercial multi-family housing. Whether working for the buyer or the seller Chris Lengquist uses time-tested investment property valuations to help you determine at what price you should sell your Kansas City area multi-family housing units or at what price you should buy.
To determine whether or not you should be looking to move your apartment now or to hang on through these rough credit times you will need a thorough evaluation of your property’s income and expenses along with an interpretation of where it’s relative neighborhood is heading.
Can I stop talking in the 3rd person, yet? Good. Let me just say that it is my desire to help you meet your economic goals. Whether you have one investment property in Kansas City or fifty. Whether you own a small single family home in Kansas City’s Waldo neighborhood or a 85 unit apartment building (commercial multi-family housing) out in Overland Park, Kansas.
I look forward to helping you with all of your Kansas City area multi-family housing needs.
Filed under Investment Property, Kansas City Real Estate
Is Your Choice Of REALTOR Important To The Sale Of Your Home?
People think of REALTORS as interchangeable and not one too much better than the next. But are you sure?
Today I attempted to set up showing appointments for 4 Kansas City duplexes. I am giving two days notice so it shouldn’t be too difficult, right?
Call #1– Info said to call agent to set up showings so I did. It took several minutes (I simply cannot make this up) for the agent to recognize what property I was speaking of and then had no answers to any of the annoying questions I asked including “What is the rent?” (that should be on the MLS info) and “Do you know when the leases expire?” The agent has promised to call me back. I await with baited breath.
Call #2 – They use a call center service. Appointment made. No problems. Oh, and the rents were on the MLS sheet.
Call #3 – After about 10 rings the answering machine kicked on and said they were either closed or on the phone. (It’s 9:55 am on a Thursday.) I left a message. This is a very well known agent so I’m hoping there are systems in place to properly listen to my message, make the appointment and call me back. Hey, I can hope, can’t I?
Call #4 – MLS directions said to call a call center service. So I did. Three times. Without an answer or answering machine. Then I called the agent. Voice mail of course. I left my message.
Let me ask you a question. With the amount of inventory currently on the market how hard do you think I’m gonna work to set up these showings? With similar numbers and address out there for rental properties I can set up appointments with agents that make showings a “no hassle” proposition. And if your agent will be dealing with your rental properties don’t you think miscellaneous information like rents and expenses and lease terms would be good information to make available to selling agents. It’s not like it won’t be asked about anyway. If your agent isn’t asking, how much do they actually know?
So the next time you think your sister-in-law’s friend of the family would be a great agent since you already know her you might want to ask her “how hard is it to see your listings?”
There are many, many great real estate agents in practice today in the Kansas City area. And sadly, there are many, many agents that make selling your house more difficult than it needs to be. Choose carefully.
Kansas City Real Estate Ranked #5
I received an email from Lisa Kanter over at Re/Max in Leawood with the following;
Daily Real Estate News | April 10, 2008Top 10 Best Cities for Home Sellers
Four factors are widely seen as affecting whether a housing market is a good one for sellers: job growth, amount of new construction, vacancy rates, and credit availability.
Forbes magazine used a variety of resources to determine how the country’s 40 largest metro areas fared according to these measures. The result is this list of top 10 cities for sellers:
- San Jose, Calif. Because of a tough regulatory environment, new home construction dropped 63 percent last year.
- San Francisco. When the conforming loan limit recently jumped from $417,000 to the maximum $729,750, that made credit much easier to get for many of the city’s home buyers.
- Salt Lake City. The 3 percent annual job growth rate, paired with a declining inventory of existing homes and one of the nation’s sharpest declines in construction made this market a good one for sellers.
- Austin, Texas. Texas is very affordable, plus the city has the nation’s fastest job growth at 4.1 percent.
- Kansas City, Mo. The number of unsold, vacant houses dropped by 40 percent last year.
- San Antonio, Texas. Jobs are growing by 3 percent and construction starts have dropped by 42 percent.
- Denver. The 49 percent drop in construction starts paired with the 2 percent rise in new jobs are good news for sellers.
- Providence, R.I. Vacancy rates at 1.6 percent combined with a 42 percent cut in inventory help sellers.
- Charlotte, N.C. Moderate prices and strong job growth bode well for sellers.
- Seattle, Wash. Strong job growth and a 42 percent decrease in new home construction are good news for sellers.
Source: Forbes, Matt Woolsey (04/07/08)
Filed under Kansas City Real Estate
Selling Your Rental Property In A Buyer’s Market
Kansas City is currently experiencing a buyer’s market. Investment property is a little better off. Certain areas of the city are better than others. Let me give you a picture of what the investment market in Kansas City currently looks like.
Below will be a couple sets of numbers for you to take a look at. One is for Johnson County, Kansas duplexes and the other is for Jackson County, MO duplexes. Now, the numbers only include duplexes priced for sale between $100,000 and $300,000. I just figured below $100,000 isn’t usually what my clients are looking for and above $300,000 just isn’t going to be profitable within the parameters I use.
Johnson County, Kansas Duplex Activity
current as of 2.21.2008
Active = 34
Pending = 3
Sold = 52 (within previous 12 months)
Jackson County, Missouri Duplex Activity
current as of 2.21.2008
Active = 147
Pending = 5
Sold = 100 (within previous 12 months)
Right away you should be able to see the market within the market. Johnson County has about a 7.5 month supply of homes while Jackson County has about a 16.5 month supply of homes. Further emphasizing that all real estate is local. And local can be broken down into cities from country, zip codes within the city and sudivision from the zip code.
As a seller of residential investment property in Kansas City you need to know that you are in for some fierce competition. And while some sellers may think they know that what I see on the market is usually overpriced, under cared for and have crappy tenants.
Why, I know of a duplex in Overland Park that has been on the market for quite some time and the real estate agent has “motivated seller” on her comments. Further inquiry discovers that one side has a tenant that isn’t paying any rent because they made improvements to the property and don’t feel they owe rent for some time to come. The other side unilaterally decided their rent was too high and cut their payment by $200 a month.
And the seller still wants retail for this Overland Park duplex!!!???!!!
There is no question I could find an investor to take this headache off their hands. But not at retail. So what can you do to be sure you can move your Kansas City are investment property if you need to cash out?
Investment Property Selling Tips
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Price it right. Know where the price point is for your particular class of investment property (and location) that the next would-be real estate investor will pull the trigger. This is not the market to “test” the waters.
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100% occupancy with quality tenants. I said quality tenants. Tenants with good payment history. Tenants with security deposits. Tenants with time left on their leases. Tenants that don’t trash their rentals.
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Deferred maintenance accounted for in the pricing or repaired before marketing. Remember, if you milked the property dry by collecting rent and not fixing a thing you will pay for it on your sales price! You might be able to get away with that crap during a seller’s market. But guess what? This isn’t a seller’s market.
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Choose the right real estate agent. I’m not the only one in Kansas City that knows and understand real estate investment property. (I am, however, the best. 🙂 – Sorry for the ego trip.) There are several good agents around the city. But that number doesn’t exceed 10-12 out of the 10,000+ licensed real estate agents around KC.
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Be prepared to assist with closing costs. Investors, and that is who will be in the market for your duplex, like to get in with as little cash as possible to maximize their equitable returns.
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Be patient. Do all of this correctly and you should sell inside 4-6 months. In fact, if you do all this correctly we should sell inside 4-6 weeks going into spring. But the real estate investor’s credit standards have changed drastically over the last year. You don’t have to like it. But it means fewer people are qualified to buy your rental property.
I’ve used duplexes as the prime examples here. But the same is true for all investment class real estate whether it be single family homes, apartments or four-plexes.
You can definitely sell your investment property in this market. In fact there is a need for quality inventory. Feel free to give me a call, write me an email or leave a comment if you have any questions or comments.
New Zip Code Appreciation (Depreciation) Map for Kansas City Real Estate
Last year I linked to the the Kansas City’s Star’s report on housing appreciation in the Kansas City metro area. By in large there was modest appreciation and some depreciation…but not enough to worry about in most places.
This year’s interactive map shows a different story. Read the entire story here. (NOTE:If the Kansas City Star holds true they will not have this map up indefinitely. 
So it’s possible the link will lead you to nowhere after a couple weeks. If they do you can purchase a zip code map for Kansas City by clicking Zip Code Map.) Now let’s put the numbers under the microscope and see what we see. Especially for those out-of-staters that read this Kansas City real estate investing blog. You need to have the full story interpreted.
Everyday I get would be real estate investors calling from around the country. Especially California. They are always wanting to flip houses and/or buy the lower priced houses in the city so they can get “good cash flow.”
The houses they like to target are generally located in the following zip codes:
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64130 -23.4% -19.6%
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64132 -12.8% -12.4%
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64134 -14.6% – 9.3%
Next to the zip codes above is the “appreciation” rate for those areas in the last year, followed by the Kansas City Star’s explanation of the appreciation rates for all years dating back to 2003.
Now lets look at the zip codes where I’ve had my last 10 transactions since December:
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66204 + 1.4% +11.7% (1 unit)
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64083 + 6.0% N/A (3 units)
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66106 -10.5% +0.7% (We got a steal on a rehab)
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64064 + 6.0% +17.4% (2 units)
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Gardner – not listed though I suspect close to Olathe’s 66062 at +7.6% +43.2%
Hey, out-of-state investors. Do you see what I’ve been talking about for the last 3 years?
While much of the country suffers through a housing correction not seen in many’s recent memory here in Kansas City the real estate investor can still find opportunity. Yes, we have areas that are suffering greatly. They are not areas that I’ve endorsed anyway. Successful real estate investing takes study, analysis and local knowledge.
And that is true whether you are investing in real estate around Los Angeles, Sacramento, Washington, DC, New York or right here in ole KC.
Filed under Kansas City neighborhoods, Kansas City Real Estate
BBQ Capital | Kansas City Real Estate Investing 