CLE real estate...a bad investment? or good? (Columbus, Cleveland: rental, bad credit)

[L2DB]

Originally Posted by bjimmy24

Internet forums aren't the best place to look for investment advice.

This.

/thread

[nep321]

Originally Posted by teacherdad

I made my net worth fro RE, but not in CLE. If you buy and sell for the same price, then you paid zero rent. That is how I see it. Property taxes, yes, but then you have the write off of the interest on the mortgage. In CA, it's a real investment. You can buy a home and see it double. I'd buy a 10 unit apt. or such and that is where do make the cash flow IMO. You aren't going to buy a home and make money in 10 years based on what I've seen. You have to expect that.

Here, your money goes into your house. In CLE (area), your money goes into living!

That is good, because I like to take $2,000 vacations every year and visit family in Florida, etc.

[nep321]

I'm getting a bit nervous but I just hope to god that having $75K in cash with no job lined up is safe enough to move to CLE. I did in-depth looking into actual job postings and noticed that, compared to other cities and relative to the metro population, there are plenty of good paying jobs that I'm exactly qualified for. I am expecting and hoping to find employment within 6 months after arriving. By then, I'll probably have about $60K in savings left. So yeah, it's a scary thing. But employers only want local candidates, so it's a colossal waste of time to apply for jobs remotely. I tried it for 5 months straight last year and it didn't work, and I ain't trying that again, because I need to move out of here ASAP.

It's a risk, but one thing is for sure: If I stay where I'm at, it will take me 15 more years to afford my first home (I'll be 46 years old). But if I go to CLE with no job lined and it even takes me a full year to find a job, I'll still have at least $40K in cash, which is plenty to buy a home there. Money is worthless where I live now. Better to have $40K and the ability to afford a house than to have $75K and be no where near being able to afford a house, right?

[Urban Peasant]

Originally Posted by nep321

But employers only want local candidates, so it's a colossal waste of time to apply for jobs remotely. I tried it for 5 months straight last year and it didn't work, and I ain't trying that again, because I need to move out of here ASAP.

From experience, most employers want to hire local candidates because they are not sure if an applicant is really serious about relocation even if the applicant says so. Either that or the employer wants/needs a starting employee ASAP and has no time or interest in waiting for someone to relocate. Depending on the field, some employers prefer homegrown talent while others prefer to bring in outsiders. You didn't expect moving somewhere else to be easy did you? You need to take risks when you relocate. Sometimes it works out well and sometimes it doesn't. You have 75k in the bank you say. Granted you cannot live off that 75k forever but as everyone in this forum says Cleveland has affordable rents right now, if you were to quit your current job and move for a year to Cleveland just as an adventure, you might just find something worthwhile. It's only in the metro area you live in that you can network with people to land a job unless you know someone there already. If you still can't find a suitable job within a year, then move back home to CT or move somewhere else.

[teacherdad]

With 75K, I'd buy a duplex and rent out the other half to make the payments. 20K down on 100K or less with good credit. No job in a year, sell it for 100K and you have your money back- might be worth more the way things are going.

Either way, it'd be less than renting for a year and you write off the interest. With no job, your taxes will be nada, basically.

[nep321]

^^^

Urban Peasant and teacherdad...

Well first of all, in my field, every job I ever gotten was through a recruiter or direct application online. Networking is very overrated, in my field. I constantly have recruiters contacting me on LinkedIn, every week. My resume is great and my skills are in demand. I'm quite confident it will work out, otherwise I wouldn't even be doing this. I wouldn't even bother to move with no job lined up even if I had $30K in the bank. Or if Cleveland didn't have enough job postings relative to the population.

But yeah, life is full of risks. No one ever got anywhere in life by playing it safe and being afraid to take a leap.

Another approach is to take a tiered approach. First, I could immediately get some retail job or something. Then, from there, maybe a temp contract job in my field, and from there maybe a perm position finally. (but I would always be looking for a perm position the whole time of course).

I also have a 401k account worth $19K if I am desperate, and a credit line of $8K. So if you add those up, that's a total of over $100K of leeway....in a very low cost area, at that. Hell, I know many people who move to new cities with no job lined up on WAY less money. I've known some people who moved across country with as low as $2,000 in the bank, and they somehow make it work.

There's a reason I chose Cleveland over other places: jobs. That's why I would never move to say, NYC, LA, Chicago or Orlando with no job lined up, because of the competition factor. Those places don't have enough job postings compared to the population.

If a recruiter or employer asks me about why I moved there with no job secured, I will explain to them that it made good financial and economic sense for me, and I am aware that Cleveland employers are interested in attracting new talent, and I would be happy be a part of the positive change for the city's future. I could also explain to them that I made efforts to find an opportunity remotely, but unfortunately it didn't work out. I recognize that employers prefer to hire local candidates, and my decision to relocate here only demonstrates my commitment to settling in the area. Given the demand for professionals in my field in Cleveland, I am confident that a suitable match will arise.

Something along those lines

[nep321]

My friend here in CT said he went to Cleveland last year and said that the traffic there is pretty bad, although not as bad as coastal CT. What the heck? I thought Cleveland had easy going traffic.

[Cleverfield]

Originally Posted by nep321

My friend here in CT said he went to Cleveland last year and said that the traffic there is pretty bad, although not as bad as coastal CT. What the heck? I thought Cleveland had easy going traffic.

I'm not sure what your friend was comparing Cleveland to, but compared to most major cities, and especially the coasts, traffic here is not bad at all. There are a few backups during rush hour, as one would expect, but other than that it flows very smoothly; we have a large number of highways for a city our size, so rarely do we see back ups if there's not construction or an accident.

[teacherdad]

Dude, your friend went there last year....he lives there? No. He knows the traffic patterns, no.

Public trans or you learn to know the patterns.

You can visit LA here and say the same thing, but if you know the correct times to be on the road, it's no biggie. Just left Irvine Sunday at 6:15 and arrived in SB in less than 2.5 hrs. You know never to go through there at 5 during the week, unless you enjoy your car a lot.

Live near the train and don't use a car, live downtown and you do not need a car. If you are not in a car, you are never in traffic.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by nep321

My friend here in CT said he went to Cleveland last year and said that the traffic there is pretty bad, although not as bad as coastal CT. What the heck? I thought Cleveland had easy going traffic.

There is a current bottleneck on the I-90 Innerbelt.

Due to incompetence and political machinations by the state of Ohio, a key artery has one bridge instead of the required two bridges. However, the second bridge is under construction.

That commute currently is a mess.