BTW, say you buy, and daughter and roomies are there for two years....

How far away from other campus housing is it? Could it be real-tooled into rental housing for new university hires??

When we moved here, it was really hard find decent rental housing that was actually geared toward grown-ups. We wouldn't have bought as soon as we did if our rental options were better....

Just a thought?

Hope it works out well!

Long term, you might consider using a 1031 exchange to get LL#2 a place to live while going to college. Or buy a second place and become a student rental tycoon!

quote:

Originally posted by Mikhailoh:
We looked at it in Muncie which is not a dissimilar market to Oxford, but at that time the houses were MUCH less expensive, like $50-90K. Rents per bedroom around Oxford are running more like $450-500. So you would realize maybe $1500 a month gross income. Factor in that it is about 7 blocks to campus, pretty far in terms of Oxford and that you would have to pay a manager as you are in PA. I think you would be buying yourself more headache than profit by buying during an unnaturally high price period.

https://www.apartments.com/oxford-oh/student-housing/

As someone who just sold a rental house in a small college town, I concur.

Two years isn't usually enough time to recoup the costs of buying. And you could take a big hit if the market goes flat. There are better and worse years for market rent--it doesn't always go up. Finding a good property manager who won't gouge you with fees is not easy. I found one, but I interviewed half a dozen and that was not an easy process by itself. Even the best manager makes expensive mistakes--no one will oversee your property like you would. Renting out a place is risky even when you are a pro landlord. For someone who doesn't have a dedicated rental business, there are land mines everywhere.

I see a lot of headaches ahead. Much worse headaches than your daughter having to move again. Frying pan, meet fire.

Well they accepted our offer and home inspection is scheduled for Monday. I'm sure we'll have an out after the inspection if we want one but at least this gives us some time to mull it over. The property manager we are considering is a fellow parent who got into the business by buying a house for his kid, then expanded to about 8 houses. He takes great care of his properties (I really tried to get LL#1 to rent from him but he had nothing available at the time.) but he has never managed for others -- he offered to help us as kind of a favor and to test the waters for expanding into a true property manager business. He retired last year so now his properties are his full time job so he has the ability to manage for others, which he never did before. He has been an amazing resource already and I'm sure he'll tell us if he feels like the house is a bad deal - if it is, we can back out via the inspection and we'll only be out the cost of the inspection (which won't be ctually be wasted money after all because no matter who owns it, LL#1 and her roomies are leased into living there next year so it would be good to know if there's anything seriously wrong.)

If all works out, we'll just keep the house forever for the cash flow and he can manage it. If it turns out to be a pain, at least I know she has a safe place to live for the next 2 years and we'll hopefully unload it after that -- rentals in that town don't tend to go down and the university is admitting its largest freshman class ever this year (who will all need off campus housing in 2 years, right after LL#1 graduates), so I can't imagine we'll come out too far behind even if we have to sell.

Congratulations!

Yay, congratulations! I think having that person as a property manager will really make things much easier!

Fantastic!

One thing good about renting to students is that they don't care about things like the retaining wall. You could demolish the whole thing and still be 100% rented every year.

Buy and hold sounds like a good plan!

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Fantastic!

One thing good about renting to students is that they don't care about things like the retaining wall. You could demolish the whole thing and still be 100% rented every year.

Buy and hold sounds like a good plan!

Well, if the retaining wall was gone, the walkout basement (which is where the kitchen is) wouldn't be walkout anymore -- the yard would cave in and block the sliding glass door. So maybe not quite accurate, LOL! But you are right - we certainly don't have to keep it up the standards we would keep our own house to.

I kind of like the fact the house has window units instead of central A/C. They go bad one at a time and they're very cheap. Having that many indicates to me that the electrical system is fairly robust. Start charging for electricity and they'll turn them off when they are not there.

In the one house I had the students had to supply their own and take them with them when they left. Most left them there, including the one in my office window at this moment.

[edit] Looking at the pictures I see that the house does have a small central A/C unit, possibly for one floor. Kitchen? Looks fairly new.

I don't see a picture of the retaining wall. Do you have one?

The firepit seems to be a "thing" in Ohio. Lots of people have them. Is there a hose bib nearby?

quote:

I don't see a picture of the retaining wall. Do you have one?

I believe you can get an idea of the problem from the last photo in the listing:
https://www.redfin.com/OH/Oxfo...-45056/home/75571788

Oh, I see. The fence is on top of a retaining wall.

The house has central air but I guess the kids on the top floor complained that it was hot up there so the owners had been putting window units in for the two top floor bedrooms. Supposedly the central air does fine for the rest of the house. Yes that whole wood wall around the patio is holding back dirt and it is caving in. There are also some very rickety stairs to get from that enclosed patio up to ground level. None of it looks very safe. The owners said they had gotten a quote of $5,000 to fix the wall but I cannot imagine it can be done that cheaply. I will get my own quote and we will negotiate and if we don't come to an agreement we will walk. I'm going to look to see if I have any other pictures of the wall.

I hope this works. It is the first time I am trying to post photos from my phone. There is a hose bib in the front of the house but I don't know if there is one in the back. It does look like you could catch the fence on fire fairly easily. Hmmmmm.

How does that area drain?