Investing in Real Estate in Pittsburgh (Scranton, Washington: apartments, foreclosures, lease)

[toredyvik]

Hey Pittsburghers,

I'm looking to invest in some (cheap) real estate.

My idea is to buy a house near a college campus, and rent to college kids. I would like this house to be in an "upcoming" area in the city, where it may be sort of run-down looking, but projects are underway to rejuvinate the place. I would also like it to be very close to a university. In this case, I'm thinking of a neighborhood next to Pitt or Carnegie Mellon.

I went to school in Rochester, NY and lived in the 19th ward for a year. If any of u guys know about the 19th ward, it isn't the nicest area of rochester, but it was safe enough (you won't get shot, but you might get harrassed). well, now that area is on the up-and-up. The U of R across the genessee river has recently begun to develop, and housing is going up in value because students are moving in and so are businesses.

Well, I now live in the DC area, and Rochester's a bit far. I see pittsburgh as a possible older bro to Rochester, and i know it has a better shot at a major rebound. I think it'd be exciting to invest in an area like that. So any recommendations on neighborhoods, etc? I've never been to pittsburgh.

PS - to answer the question of why don't i invest locally: The East Coast is way too expensive.

[BrianTH]

I can't say I am thrilled at the prospect of an absentee landlord. There is already more than enough such people "investing" in Pittsburgh's student ghettos.

[RedBall]

Well good luck. Real Estate speculation is hard. Especially for the "hobbyist".

[toredyvik]

Hey im sorry if that's looked down upon, i didn't realize I would get a kind of negative tone in the responses. I'm not looking to take advantage of a city in a bad way or anything. Is this sort of thing frowned upon? - I would be absentee, but it's close enough to drive to on a weekend if I needed to...

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by toredyvik

Hey im sorry if that's looked down upon, i didn't realize I would get a kind of negative tone in the responses. I'm not looking to take advantage of a city in a bad way or anything. Is this sort of thing frowned upon? - I would be absentee, but it's close enough to drive to on a weekend if I needed to...

Well -- rather this isn't the best venue for this. We're more the cheerleader don't you want to move here we're a pretty cool place to live sort of board.

And yeah -- absentee landlording is a negative thing. You want to take all the money out of Pittsburgh, and spend it where you want to live. But dear heavens forbid, YOU won't live here.

[BrianTH]

The problem is absentee landlords in the student ghettos don't take very good care of their properties (since they can rent them out to students regardless), which depresses property values for both their own properties and others, and reduces property taxes. They are also taking the net return on their properties out of the jurisdiction, and generally don't take an active role in improving the City--instead they are waiting for the activities of others to cause appreciation, and then they can cash in, again removing that return from the jurisdiction. As a result we have some neighborhoods with the potential to be among the best in the City (most notably large chunks of Oakland, and also parts of Polish Hill, Bloomfield, Friendship, Greenfield, and so on), but currently aren't, and absentee landlords are a large part of the reason why.

So nothing personal, but that's why I would "frown upon" someone looking to become another absentee landlord in Pittsburgh's student ghettos.

Edit: By the way, I don't want to make it seem like I am opposed to all non-resident real estate investment in Pittsburgh. If some outside person or company wants to invest in developing new properties in Pittsburgh, or redeveloping currently vacant or underutilized properties, that's great--we need more of that, and I won't begrudge them a decent return on their investments. It is just the specific scenario I sketched above--absentee landlords buying but not actually investing in maintaining and improving properties, which is all too common in student areas in particular--that is a problem, and an actual impediment to redevelopment of the desirable kind.

[Renaldo5000]

Lawrenceville, Polish Hill and maybe Troy Hill if you get a really good deal. The HUD website has foreclosures that used to belong to HUD families. I had a friend who got a house in Bloomfield (one of the better neighborhoods of Pittsburgh) for $25,000 from the HUD foreclosure site.

[toredyvik]

I would consider moving to Pittsburgh actually...all depends on the job prospects. I am also interested in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute for a master's or Ph.D

[onwardandupward]

I'd advise getting the job or acceptance letter before moving here. CMU's Robotics graduate programs are extremely competitive.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by toredyvik

I would consider moving to Pittsburgh actually...all depends on the job prospects. I am also interested in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute for a master's or Ph.D

Pittsburgh is seriously a very underrated city. I work in Tyson's, actually, and live in Reston, and I'm just getting burned out here. It took me nearly three hours yesterday to get from Reston to Catonsville, MD (below Baltimore), at an average speed of 18 miles per hour. It wasn't a very far distance at all. Today while driving back to Reston I saw traffic jam after traffic jam on a SATURDAY. Couple this with the outrageous cost of housing, high proportion of Type-A rude people, and lack of a feeling of "community cohesion", more or less, and I finally ran out of reasons to love living in Fairfax County and am now in the process of relocating to Pittsburgh. If all goes well I'll be living in Mt. Washington by the end of this year.

I can most certainly empathize with BrianTH's concerns. I'm a native of Scranton, PA, which is a big college town of 72,000 with Marywood University, the University of Scranton, The Commonwealth Medical College, Johnson College, Lackawanna College, etc., and NY/NJ slumlords buy properties in Scranton on the cheap, make minimal (if any) improvements, and then rent them out to anyone willing to pay them rent, be they responsible grad students, party-hardy frat boys, or drug dealers who cater to the college community. The Lower Hill, a very historic neighborhood on the cusp of Downtown, is home to a lot of grand old homes that have been subdivided into apartments and were allowed to become distressed. The entire neighborhood now suffers. The same can be said for parts of Scranton's SouthSide, where similar problems are occurring, albeit in this case they are of one particular demographic residing in close quarters within the same living units. I'm not saying you'd be irresponsible too, toredyvik, but the odds are that you'll only be in Pittsburgh if something requires you to be here, so you'll be "absentee" in that you might not interact with your tenants for months and months on end, being completely unaware of how they are contributing to (or detracting from) the neighborhood with their presence.

I, too, plan to invest HEAVILY in Pittsburgh over my lifetime, buying up many historic homes, restoring them to their former grandeur, and then renting them out to responsible tenants. I'll be living in the city, too, and might make tenants comply with random housing inspections a part of a contract in order to lease from me. Yeah, I'd be a hard-nose, but if you're responsible, then you'd have nothing to worry about. My property manager could come into my unit right now, and other than a few dishes in my sink and a few boxes I have begun to pack for my next move there wouldn't be anything that should draw ire.