Buying a house in Alpharetta to rent out? Thank you.

[We Find Housing]

Hello I am currently working for a company called We Find Housing. We are a tenant placement company. What we do is find and pre-screen potential tenants for your property. The second you sign up with us you will have a property specialist that is assigned to your property. We are currently working with 10 Atlanta counties. You can learn more on our website wefindhousing.com. We have just launched the website this week. But we have been doing this for 5 years. If you want some more information you can email me at neill@wefindhousing.com. I hope that we can help you with your future investment.

[anadyr21]

Just want to reiterate my question here. How easy is it to find a good tenant for an Alpharetta (or maybe Duluth) house in the $500-$600K range? Would I experiences long periods of vacancy? I assume rent would be at market price or slightly below. Thanks again for any help.

I don't think your problem will be finding a good tenant. It will be finding one willing to pay 3000-4000 a month for rent. I rarely see a for rent sign for large homes in subdivisions; only for sale, and not a lot of those either. Why would someone spend that much for a home when they can pay less than half of that for a large 3 bed/2 bath apartment zoned for a good school in a nice, safe neighborhood? Hell, there are new townhomes just built that are running 200,000-300,000 in the Alpharetta/Duluth area. How much are you planning on charging for rent?

[mistersocks]

Originally Posted by jeweloflight

One thing's for sure stastically, real estate ALWAYS appreciates; sometimes at a slow rate, sometimes at a fast one, but it appreciates none the less.

Except, of course, when it depreciates:

Atlanta home resale prices drop another 1 percent | ajc.com

This seems like a pretty volatile time to buy. Why not wait a little while longer and see what happens? It's unlikely with the huge supply and weak demand here in ATL that prices are going to jump anytime soon.

As far as rental conditions, I can't speak to Alpharetta, but I rent a 3/1 SFH in Virginia Highlands that sold late last year for $440K and my rent is $1600 a month. That's not what you'd call positive cashflow.

[JennySells]

What you are looking to buy may be a little hard to rent. With the investors we have worked with the all have a set price in mind (much lower) because they know this area can provide renters for them. You need to make sure your mortgage payment will not exceed the rental pymt - unless you are putting down a large down payment. You also need to check with a mortgage company to find out what is required in that price range for a rental property. Also some neighborhoods have convenants against buying a home for rental - we have run into that several times, be sure to ask for a copy of the Covenants. We are in a situation now where there is a great foreclosure, but the Committee is actually voting right now whether or not the are going to ban propertys for rentals. But sometimes they still have some kind of "Hardship Clause" for a certain percentage of the homes.