Quote:
Originally Posted by Edward64
Looking back, any tips or trade secrets on picking the house you did?
|
It was hard to miss in a city like Boise, but my own strategy with both of my home purchases was looking for a not-great neighborhood that was close to the city center. As the city grows out and out, those pockets of run-down neighborhoods get improved very quickly. Of course this only works in a city that is growing.
I live in a still pretty-run down area of the Boise Bench, but the improvement has already been very visible. It was very obvious to me that a neighborhood 15 minutes from the airport and 15 minutes from downtown was going to be very hot in a city where new home buyers are starting to have to look more and more and the growing suburbia 20 miles+ outside of downtown. Even in 2015, you could see that the 80+year old 700 square foot houses were being torn down one by one and replaced with new construction. And, I've bought houses that don't have any big problems that need immediate attention, but is older and will need fixing up sooner or later. So every time I do have to do a repair, it's less stressful because I'm tangibly and dramatically improving the house with each new thing.
So I guess the common thread with both of those strategies is look for both a house and a neighborhood that has room to improve. You'll get a better value and you'll benefit from that improvement. A nice house in a nice neighborhood might improve in value, but not because the neighborhood or house improves, which limits the value increase.