Why Invest In Cincinnati, OH | EP. 65

Foreign.

Well, welcome back, everyone. As promised, we are here to talk about our podcast number 65. This is REI Real Talk for investors in real estate investing. I'm your host, Mark Woodring, the director investments here at Freedom Real Estate Group, as always joined by our Director of Acquisitions, Mr. Matthew Packard. And we are going to talk about why invest in Cincinnati? I know that, as we had mentioned on our earlier vlog that we have spoken a couple times about Cincinnati, the Cincinnati market, and why we're coming back to talk about it again is because Cincinnati, it's just a great market for investors. I know that when people are doing their research and they're looking at what cities to potentially put their money again, Dayton, where we're at, is a strong market. But you know what tops the charts every single year is Cincinnati. Great returns. Great returns on investment.

Absolutely.

Now, Pac, I know that you. You're from Cincinnati. You lived in Cincinnati a long time, right?

Yeah, well, you know, actually born and raised in Columbus, Ohio.

Okay.

About an hour and a half north, but came down to UC and, you know, got to represent my Bearcats, graduated and never left, so. But, yeah, Cincinnati has been my home here for about 20 years now. So I love it. It's a great area. You know, of course, just talking about investing here in the Midwest, you know, the, the cost of living is a little lower than, of course, you know, those, those coasts, you know, the far east coast and obviously the West Coast. So it's a great market, a great area for investors to invest in. You know, that dollar will stretch a lot longer here, you know, in, in the Midwest, especially Cincinnati, of course, Dayton. But. But, yeah, Cincinnati is a great area, great place. I love it. And, yeah, it's definitely attracting a lot of folks to invest here.

Yeah. And I mean, obviously, you have a unique perspective because you run the part of the company that we do the acquisition. So neighborhoods that we're shopping in, I mean, how does the future look? I mean, how are we looking in Cincinnati? Are we looking that there's plenty of inventory? Is there shortages? Like, you know, again, a lot of markets right now might be struggling. You know, what do you think the pulse is for us?

Absolutely. No. Cincinnati is looking good right now just because there is a lot of development going on right now. Sure. I mean, if you look around down in over the Rhine, you know, Avondale, Evanston, there's a lot of areas that are just growing and booming, and there's a lot of opportunity there. So as far as the market.

I.

Don'T think there's A shortage of inventory just yet, but plenty of opportunity here for sure. It's looking bright.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, just as a realtor looking at home prices, and you had mentioned the affordability of them, you know, so again, here in the Midwest, Dayton, Cincinnati, just affordable. But you can see that the values are going up. You know, a house that you might have bought two years ago has definitely made you money year after year. I think we're also starting to see, and you may agree with this with us, is that the rents, you know, are slowly starting to catch up. I think there was a point where the value of the house was going up faster than you could raise the rent to keep that one to one.

Absolutely.

That we talk about again. So for investors just joining Here, that 1% rule is you buy a house for $100,000, in theory, you should be able to rent it for $1,000 to have that one to one ratio. And again, with Cincinnati, the market was exploding. You know, you buy a house for, you know, $130,000, you might be getting 1100 rent, but now that same $130,000 house probably will get you the 1300 rent.

Absolutely.

Because again, you know, we have maybe touched on this in other podcasts and other vlogs about with the interest rates rising, it's basically, you know, I mean, I don't know, like, each investor might look at things differently. It's not really going to take away your purchasing power, you know, so the opportunities are still there. I think you just have to kind of look into the future. You know, what is your investment going to bring for you? And of course, these rising home values, you know, can't hurt. So.

Yeah, yeah, definitely seeing that. Yeah. The rising home values are obviously great. And obviously for, you know, investors, with the rents going up, that's always good for them as well. I did see a recent Fox poll. They had ranked Cincinnati number four in the country in the highest, you know, rent increases. So obviously that's always beneficial for investors and things of that nature. So, yeah, it's looking bright, it's looking good, for sure.

Absolutely. I mean, and so, you know, just to talk about what is. What's some of the local flavor, you know, what, why is Cincinnati so awesome? You know, why do people go to it? You know, what. What do you do when you're in Cincinnati? Right.

Yeah, absolutely. So. Well, Cincinnati is definitely, in my opinion, it's going to be a destination city here in the next 10 to 15 years. I do believe there's a lot going on Obviously, you have your sports teams, you have your Reds, you know, you have your Bengals. Of course, you know, they made it to the super bowl last year. So, you know, they're, they're drawing an attraction. And of course, people moving in. There's plenty of, you know, corporate headquarters here. You know, you have P and G, you know, they're headquartered here. You have Procter and Gamble, you know, they're headquartered here. You're fit. Thirds, your, your GEs. So, you know, the opportunity just for Kroger. Yeah, how could I forget Kroger? But yeah, just the opportunity of folks moving in for, you know, jobs, you know, makes Cincinnati attractive as well. And then just, of course, the local region, I mean, you have Cincinnati, which is, you know, close to Columbus, you know, capital city of Ohio. So plenty of things to go there, but it's just a great, you know, just pocket of the Midwest where you can do a lot. So plenty of opportunity here, which of course, investors love.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I personally like going down to Cincinnati. You know, the downtown, lots of restaurants, lots of. I feel like there's a different brewery opening down there. You know, the River Walk. So when you're down there on the river and you go right across the city, you know, there's seven, eight bridges down there.

Yeah, there's a bunch.

So it's just a really cool view. You can hang out on the Kentucky side. You can see the stadiums from over, across the river. I mean, so, yeah, it's great. You know, and then like, you had mentioned some of the different cities. I really like when we do some acquisitions over on the west side of Cincinnati. Like, what is that? West Prince Hill.

Price Hill. Price Hill.

Yeah, there you go. Price Hill. Yeah. So that's really cool, like, you know, because again, it's, it's not a flat city. You would think being right on the Ohio river, that things are flat, but I mean, there's lots of cool little pockets and hills and.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The geography of it all is great. I mean, the different neighborhoods, you know, it all blends well together.

Yeah.

You know, there's a lot of.

Old.

Money here, if you will, you know, so. And, and you know, you mentioned Price Hill and you know, different places like that. There's great pockets of the city here that just hold tremendous home values. I mean, you'll have, you know, old million dollar homes.

Yeah.

You know, you know, two streets over from. Yeah. Indian Hill. So it's, it's. Yeah, it's definitely, like I said, I love it here. So.

Yeah.

Enough about it.

Absolutely. I mean, lots of great universities here. I mean, absolutely. Cincinnati and the Bearcats. You got Xavier, Xavier.

Yep, yep. Mount St. Joe's you know, they're, they're not too far and yeah, always a good football squad there. But, but yeah, the area is great. And you know, speaking of schools, you know, the high schools, you know, you have Walnut Hills, you know, they're nationally ranked. You know, I think the number one school in Ohio, if I'm not mistaken. So it's, you know, high school. Yeah, yeah, it's.

There's a lot like Polar Saint X. So I mean, yeah, you got, you got lots of great high schools. I mean, absolutely can move locally.

Absolutely.

Just to be able to take advantage of some of those school districts. And like you had mentioned just, just a ton of business opportunity. So I mean, I remember I was talking to an investor and you know, he kind of like talked about how he does his investing and he has, I believe, seven or eight properties and few of them are duplexes, maybe some single family homes. Just mixing it up a little bit. But it was kind of weird when he talked about like how he, you know, has, you know, a little bit of his business that he rents to military, you know, and his, you know, business he does for like hospitals and things like that and then some people who are maybe even transitioning into a home or things like that. But it was kind of neat that he had it spread out like that. And you know, as we're sitting here talking, you got to think that that is exactly what we're talking about here in Cincinnati. You know, I mean, you have the big businesses if you want, you do have the military presence. You know, you have Ray Patterson Air Force Base straight away. It's one of the largest, you know, in the nation. And then of course you have all the hospitals and things that are in the downtown Cincinnati. So yeah, as an investor, it just makes sense because you're not, if you wind up buying multiple properties, you're not just locked into one sort of like socio economic group.

Exactly.

So that you can kind of spread your monies around and your properties around in these different neighborhoods. What's that one property we have like in Harvard? Like that's, that's a cool area. I like that nice little area over there.

Absolutely.

You know what I mean? So you have that like. So maybe that's some of the school area. And then of course when you're talking about Price Hill, you know what I mean? That's probably more outlying business area. Yeah, I Mean, there's. Yeah. So really, I really do like the idea of Cincinnati is a big city with lots of different areas that you can spread your investments around.

Exactly. Yeah. It's a great area to, you know, kind of hit upon that, diversify your, you know, the type of assets that you do have. You know, you want your. Plenty of duplexes and multifamily squads, things of that nature. And of course, you have your big single family as well. So you can definitely, like I mentioned earlier, make your dollar stretch and make it real. Make it look real good here. For sure.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Cincinnati, what else? I mean. I mean, so I know that some of the bullet points that we had talked about is that Forbes has it listed as one of 15 emerging downtowns. I know that they've pumped a lot of money into downtown. I know it's really cool to go down there, hang out before the Games.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Festival right now. You know, again, I don't know when people are gonna be watching this, but we're recording this here in the summer. So there's festivals going on, you know, where they block off the downtown. I mean, it's a safe city. You know, like, when I walk or when I walk around Cincinnati, you know, I mean, I was never really a part of the town where I don't feel, you know, just safe at home. You know, it's real, real, real nice.

Absolutely. And they've. They've made a concerted effort to do that. I mean, just like I said when I got here, you know, years ago, it's. It's a vast difference to what it is now. I mean, you're talking, you know, 20 years ago, you have riots on the same streets where you have now $400,000 condos.

Right?

So it's. It's definitely change. It's definitely a safe place. Definitely a safe area. You know, you're gonna, you know, have all kinds of things to do, all kinds of festivals. There's concerts every weekend, you know, in Washington park and all kinds of things to do down on the banks. Airy. I mean, it's just. It. It's plenty to do. So any investors wanting to. To tap in, this is this.

Yeah, right. Anybody watching you want to come and roll for Cincinnati? We'll. Tour guide.

Definitely. Let me know. We'll. We'll show you a good time.

Absolutely. So, again, I know that maybe a competitor or another teacher of buying and selling, but Fortune builders ranked Cincinnati as the best rental market in 2021. So that's, again, just more Kudos that other companies are paying attention to what's happening here in Cincinnati. I'm sure that, you know, on the acquisition side, that it's probably getting, you know, tougher because you can see more people are getting the word. And so a lot more people are in here trying to shop the market.

And, yes, absolutely. That is, of course, a challenge we have here in acquisitions. You know, everybody. I'm not going to say everybody. A lot of people wants to be a wholesaler now, you know, know, and, you know, so everybody thinks they know how to do it, you know, but we're actually helping some people. We're showing them the right ways to go about that. But it does make it a little bit difficult on the acquisition side. Yes, the. You know, there's plenty of inventory out there, but there's also a lot of people going after it. So, yeah, like I said, it's just about us doing our due diligence, make sure we're staying ahead of the game and. And, you know, just putting the foothold here. So. But yeah, it is definitely, like I said, a great market.

Yeah. I like what you had said earlier about that. You see this as being a destination city. And again, as a realtor, I always say I don't have the magic crystal ball to tell the future. But again, I agree with your point on that. I mean, there's just a lot to do. The value for the home is there, the explosion in rentals. And people that want to rent here in Cincinnati, I think are just future years out, you know, not gonna slow down. If anything, it's gonna gain more momentum as the word gets out. Again, we Talked about that 1%, you know, that that's there. I mean.

Oh, yeah.

Some of our properties, when you do the duplexes and things like that, they're well above 1%.

Absolutely.

You know, and so.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's just. It's just. It's just great market. I'm sure that, you know, our subscribers here, when you. When you get on and just kind of pull up Cincinnati, any kind of report that you see, it's just going to cite, you know, how good the city is, how great the rental markets are, how great your. Your dollar goes, all the business that's coming to town, just. Just all these neighborhoods that are opening up and being renovated. Just a lot of prosperity. I mean, you can go on and on and on. And, you know, obviously, we got to keep our. Our podcast not too crazy, you know.

Sure, sure, sure.

Enough to keep you excited, but not enough Absolutely.

And with that, you know. Yeah, anybody out there looking to get involved, you know, definitely reach out to us, Obviously reach out@market freedomrealestategroup.com you can reach out to me at acquisitions over at cashprohouses. You know, we'll be there. We can hold your hand through the whole process if you're, you know, really looking into it. So, yeah, don't hesitate to reach out.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, pack. As always, I definitely appreciate your time and talking about your home city and.

Absolutely.

So as we always like to sign off, we always like to tell our investors to invest smart, live happy. You got it. Thanks, everyone.

Have a good one, folks.

Appreciate it.

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