Recently, one friend of main asked about that. He want to buy 1-2 inexpensive condos

in USA and rent it out for cheap for students, immigrants or anybody else. He do not plan

to live in USA and he never been there and even don't plan to visit, so his knowledge is limited.

Wood/carton made houses and slums, as he said, he will not review.

Any suggestions ? Where is percentage of (current rent)/(market price) is better ?

researcher wrote:Recently, one friend of main asked about that. He want to buy 1-2 inexpensive condos

in USA and rent it out for cheap for students, immigrants or anybody else. He do not plan

to live in USA and he never been there and even don't plan to visit, so his knowledge is limited.

Wood/carton made houses and slums, as he said, he will not review.

Any suggestions ? Where is percentage of (current rent)/(market price) is better ?

This current plan of your friend to buy rental properties in the USA? I PROMISE you It won't end well.
Even aside from the insanity of buying real estate sight unseen there is his bias against wood framed homes. Guess what much of residential housing in the USA is built using? Hint: The correct answer isn't "with labor of unskilled peasants given the absolute cheapest materials to build with because the developer won't be held financially responsible if problems appear more than 2 years after handover".

is he looking to help people (unlikely since he could probably help more people in his own country with same funds) or profit? if for profit, this is a good time to pick up real estate in the states but it may be years before he sees even a minimal return on investment. i would advise aganist taking such actions in the current climate since he is unfamiliar with the area.

if he is insistant then have him check out vacation spots (ie, florida), university campus surroundings, anything close to transport and hard hit areas (vegas, florida, california, etc). if long term stablity is important then solid markets that were not as severely impacted by the economy would be good bets (ie, baltimore, philadelphia, boston (parts)).

Mister GZPF wrote:bias against wood framed homes.

Yes, this friend afraid buy wood homes because of often tornados and prefer condos because of relatively low price.

Magnolia wrote:is he looking to help people (unlikely since he could probably help more people in his own country with same funds) or profit? if for profit, this is a good time to pick up real estate in the states but it may be years before he sees even a minimal return on investment. i would advise aganist taking such actions in the current climate since he is unfamiliar with the area.

if he is insistant then have him check out vacation spots (ie, florida), university campus surroundings, anything close to transport and hard hit areas (vegas, florida, california, etc). if long term stablity is important then solid markets that were not as severely impacted by the economy would be good bets (ie, baltimore, philadelphia, boston (parts)).

Thank you for advice ! This friend think what in current situation US property have better rental return from the selling price.

Well he can start somewhere in the west like California. Find some propeties near universities like UCLA, USC..etc. There are thousands of Chinese mainland rich kids goes to these school so he can put some ad here in China renting out his properties.

^ Nice idea, thank you !

researcher wrote:Yes, this friend afraid buy wood homes because of often tornados and prefer condos because of relatively low price.

HA!

^ Yeah, you know that story "The Wizard of Oz" ..