First-Time Rental Investor: Where to Look?

A question came up on the website city-data.com that is frequently asked about real estate investing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area: "Where do I start?"

Everyone has their favorite area to invest, but what if we wanted to be totally objective?

I went into the latest test version of the Locate Alpha system and set some constraints so that the suggestions are solid enough for a first-time investment:
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• House price <= $180k
  
• Cap rate medium to high by DFW standards
  
• Historic appreciation in the last 3 yrs >= 5% pa
  
• Neighborhood change (edu levels, income, crime) stable to improving
  
• Violent crime 4 out of 10 or below relative to DFW metro
  
• Economic stress 6 out of 10 or below relative to DFW metro
  
• Demand score (job access) medium to high

There are are a few areas like this on the Dallas side, but you will find more on the Fort Worth side. Some examples are shown below. From there, you start monitoring the listings in those areas and seeing how much work you're willing to put into upgrades. If you're looking for something rent-ready, which I recommend for a first investment, there are ones that pop up that have already been fixed up, which after all costs, gets you a lower cap rate but still could achieve 4%+.

For a second or third property you can start to widen the criteria a bit and take on something a little more ambitious.

​About Spatial Laser

We are building a software-as-a-service offering to help real estate investors discover where to buy rental properties, down to the exact block and individual opportunity. We use machine learning to model investment returns, risk, and market conditions at the hyper-local level using proprietary ranking and scoring. We display this visually in a colorful map-driven system. Investors get recommendations they can act upon immediately.

As we build our product, we are looking for early adopters and test users. Be the first to know about product updates by signing up here: https://mailchi.mp/spatiallaser/prelaunch