Interesting strategy

I live in northeast PA, where we get a lot of investors from NY and NJ buying apartments. One strategy at least a couple local investors I know have been using is to buy a building at retail or close to it, then jack up the rents and sell the property immediately to an out of state investor. Has anyone seen this before? Properties will sit on the market for months, then all of a sudden be bought and resold for $20k more in a matter of weeks.

If I were to buy a building like that, the numbers need to be there for a year or two to be believable. It depends on the market rents and the quality of the apts. compared to the market. What if a large chunk of renters get fed up and find another place. Then you have a large vacancy hole to fill. IT sounds like they’re banking on the “greater fool theory”.

That happens all the time. That is why when you look for a property and you wonder what they have been smoking? They either did that strategy or they bought with no idea of what they were doing and want you to bail them out. Or they have used the greater fool theory (which is the basis of most flipping and all stock investing)