Here's What You Need to Know to Win in the Montgomery AL Market

In this episode, Michael Atkins with Harris & Atkins Real Estate tells us what we should know about investing in the Montgomery market. Learn about the particularities of the market, return metrics, the school zones, taxes, common problems, and what you need to do to win in this rising market. Michael Atkins 334-318-0570 --- Transcript   Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor Podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions, and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by my co host, Mark Woodling. And we're going to be talking to our certified agent, one of our certified agents out in Montgomery, Alabama, Michael Atkins, and he's going to walk us through everything our buyers need to be aware of when they're investing in Montgomery. So let's get into it.   Michael Atkins, thanks so much for taking the time out of I know you're very busy schedule to join us today. Really appreciate it.   Michael A: Yeah, yeah. It's nice talk to you guys.   Michael: And you are down in Montgomery, Alabama, right?   Michael A: Yes, sir.   Michael: Fantastic. And I know that Mark, and I know a little bit about your background, but for all of our listeners who are new to would love to hear a little bit about who you are, where you're come from, and what your background is in real estate.   Michael A: Yeah, so um, I got my real estate license pretty much as early as I could. And so I've been practicing for about 15 years. But when I started, I had a lots of hair, looked like a kid, no wrinkles on my forehead. And, you know, out there trying to advise people on buying and selling real estate and so that here's this kid trying to tell us what to do just didn't go over very well.   Michael: I know how that goes.   Michael A: Didn't have a whole lot of clients. You know, I ran across these folks that have owned about 20 houses. And they were looking for a new property manager. And they're like, Hey, you know, if you'll manage our properties, we'll buy houses through you. And I was a, I guess they found a great sucker for that. Sounds like a great deal.   And so I had no training, no experience, no, no, property management software, I just got like a box of keys. And, you know, hey, go have at it. And it didn't take very long for me to figure out like, Hey, I gotta figure out some some kind of system. And so I started operating with -inaudible- was buying them more properties, picked up some more investors. And this was kind of at a time when, you know, probably everybody that's buying a house right now would love to about bought everything on the market at that time. Most investors I ran across, didn't know what an Excel spreadsheet was, you know, the house looks great. Yeah, I'll pay cash. Let's just buy it.   And we're negotiating 5-10 $20,000 under list price. And there was no real strategic math problem that we're doing about purchasing properties, what we can rent it for. It was it was just kind of hey house looks nice, good bones, rent it for around this number. Sure. It sounds great. You know, so got up to about 80 properties, I was managing about 80 by myself. And it was a, it was a lot to do then it just felt like I was going from one emergency to the next of you know, hey, these people haven't paid rent, we got to start the eviction process. Oh, by the way, $1.38 over on this account, so it means I made a mistake someplace else. So I need to spend the next three hours figuring out what went wrong where and then, you know, now we got a bunch of vacancies. So I had to supervi