So, my wife and I have been looking for the past two months for our first investment property/home (our plan was to move into a multi- or SF and then rent it out after gaining OO financing) in Virginia. This week, she has learned that she stands a good chance at a major promotion at work. The catch is that the job is in KC and she would be expected to start in April. Of course, one of my first thoughts were which is better to invest in - Kansas or Missouri?
What say you, reiclub?
Both are primarily “red” states so they should have relatively friendly laws for LL’s. I’ve driven thru KC a few times, but it was several years ago. If it were me, I would look at the LL/tenant laws for Kansas and Missouri. I would also contact the county courts for the counties on each side of the state line to see what their eviction costs and procedures are. I would also look at market prices and rents for each of the counties to see if there was a significant difference between the counties.
Hi,
I made a lot of investments in Kansas City (Kansas & Missouri) in 1995, 1996, 1997 and into 1998. I was remodeling apartment buildings and I lost over $500k to thefts, vandalism and fraud. Kansas City Missouri and Kansas City Kansas seem to have a lot of coruption, fraud and greed, I would never ever again go into either city with the intent to even buy one property, in fact you could not give me a property there.
Now with that said area’s outside of Kansas City like Blue Springs or Independance Missouri are better and more decent area’s and Overland Park Kansas is a decent area but I would not buy anything in Kansas City, Whether Kansas or Missouri.
Watch the Black Ice on Roads and freeways in the winter there, as those area’s can be trecherous!
GR
Born and raised in KC. I lived on the Kansas side in Overland Park. I haven’t owned any property there but I completely agree with Gold River. The burbs around KC on both the KS and MO sides are very nice. KC itself can be a really rough town and there is a town of corruption. Case in point…the Mayor of KCMO has a son who is just a complete piece of trash. He’s basically a trust fund baby but goes around harassing people, flashing gang signs, watching friends get gunned down, and starting fights. The KC police have orders just to drop him off back at home and not arrest him. He’s in the news everyt couple months with some new BS. Lulz, he tried that crap in the burbs and had to sit in jail for a day until they decided to call his dad to come bail him out.
So buy in the burbs but visit downtown for fun. Oh and make sure to enjoy the best BBQ in the world. KC is the jewel of the midwest that most people don’t know about. Affordable living, good diversity, good culture, awesome airport (minus the ugly look), good medical care, and the people aren’t too insane. Don’t get Sprint for phone service. Their world head quarters are in Overland Park and I had bad reception at my parents’ home 4 miles away.
Well, certainly I’d like to avoid areas infiltrated by corruption though I’m not sure how it would directly impact us, at least starting out. What I do like is there do seem to be several multi-families that would pay the mortgage, insurance, maintenance, and taxes while we live in one of the units essentially rent-free. Justin, I appreciate your advice on looking of LL-tenant law of each state and the eviction process. Bad tenants and a messy eviction process are probably the things that could give us the most trouble. (Other than buying a money pit).
Just a couple thoughts on possible corruption. What about a scenario where people were going around breaking into houses to steal things, but the cops didn’t do anything because they were paid to look the other way? You as a LL would be paying to fix the damage done to gain entry to the house. What about problems with the eviction process where the court system makes it unnecessarily hard for you to get someone out because they keep changing the rules or do something else to be against you as a LL?
Yeah - the stuff about the eviction process… I was just thinking that if everything else were equal (you could find the same quality of deals on either side of the state line and you didn’t care which state you lived in) differences in the eviction process could help you decide which place would be better to invest/live.
Never heard of this. Now if you buy property in the bad parts of KC where break-ins and crime are common place you may have a problem. Cops won’t look the other way they just won’t show up unless nothing else is going on. They’d probably be busy with more serious offenses.
That’s why if you stick to the burbs it won’t be an issue. In the burbs the cops literally have nothing important to do. So if anything beyond a parking ticket comes up they lose their minds and race to the “action”. Each of the cities in suburbia has their own SWAT team that maybe has one legit call per year. The year I worked for a police department as a dispatcher they had 4 murders in the city. That’s 4 times the usual number. All of them were solved because they had 8 detectives with absolutely nothing else to do.
Now as far as landlord tenant laws, getting blocked by city hall or commerce I have no idea how much and to what extent the corruption goes. Generally though if you can sell the idea of how it will be good for the community and bring “prestige” or “clean” the place up you’ll get help, especially in the snooty burbs. If you are in doubt if the area you are looking to invest in is safe just ask locals our the PD.
Missouri is more LL friendly, pricing is better in KS.
Given the choice between the two, I’d go with MO since it’s significantly faster to evict in MO.
The burbs of KC are great, but within the city, there are areas which are more difficult than others.
Hi,
I am going to jump back in and explain a little more about my position on Kansas City (Missouri & Kansas) first I owned and operated a very successful construction company when I went into Kansas City in 1995. I brought 7 company trucks, two flat beds, two dump trucks and two trailers with a backhoe, bobcat, chain trencher, compressor and a few other pieces of equipment I can't remember now.
A city is the city. When we refer to the City of Los Angeles we refer to that city, not Compton, not South Central, not Long Beach, not Pasadena, not Van Nuys and not Lakewood for example. If you know Kansas City you know there are not any real wealthy area’s of the actual city, there are a bunch of very large, very expensive homes south of the plaza but that area is no longer considered Kansas City.
If you head east out of town and get to the stadium you are just at the border of Kansas City and Independence Missouri but you are leaving the city.
There are no good places in Kansas City! Oh sure there are great places to eat or drink downtown or at the Plaza, there are places to eat in the Hallmark Center, but would you or I really like to live in the city, probable not if we could avoid it.
During 2 years rehabbing apartment buildings (Units) and houses I had one break in after another, some properties were broken into every week or every other week, if it were purely thefts that would be great, some or most of these items would be covered by insurance but when they come in and steal something chained around the stair case post and they purposely rip out 3 stories of stair case rail to get a $150 dollar item it hurts.
We had theft and vandalism, the theft was huge but the vandalism was bigger. I knew most of the shift supervisors for KCPD and was on a first name basis with dozens of officers, but Kansas City was hugely understaffed when I was there, I was forced to check my own projects once or twice a night just to keep activity down.
I had a CCW permit I would walk in armed and would have had no problem shooting someone in a property under my care, especially announcing we were there and armed so intruders should come out, I had six of my own construction supervisors checking properties between 5:00 PM and 6:00 AM, but with 15 or 20 projects it was a sure thing we could not cover everything all the time.
When you hard bid a property for construction costs plus profit and overhead there is no money to place armed guards on 15 or 20 properties 113 hours a week. When we would find an intruder and hold them at gun point it took 30 to 45 minutes just to get a squad car to respond and usually after being booked in and charged these guys were let go because of overcrowding 12, 24 or 48 hours later.
I filed no less than 250 reports with local police, in fact the FBI was involved as most of the stolen tools and equipment was believed to be being shipped down south to Oklahoma City and Amarillo Texas. When you have a 25 unit building where 100% of the kitchen and bath cabinets and fixtures are loaded in broad day light from a building and no body see’s it there’s a problem because if you know the area there are probable 300 to 400 apartment units in 3 blocks and police estimated it would take a 6 man crew and two 24’ box trucks to load the materials in, yet no one has seen anything.
I had one of my flatbeds stolen from behind a job site, driven 15 miles and crashed into the center rail at 50 or 60 miles an hour and yet no one see’s the driver and supposable no finger prints could be found, another pick-up stolen over the Christmas holiday and crashed into a telephone pole yet not a single witness and supposable no finger prints.
Although we managed to rehab hundreds of units in Kansas City (Missouri & Kansas) it cost me half of my equipment and about $500k in cash losses uncovered by insurance.
Were Cops on the take? I have no idea for sure but there were plenty of rumors and even more issues written in local papers. Could officers have come by our projects more often and checked? Probable. But in all the time we were out there I never once had officers call me and tell me someone broke into one of the properties in our control.
In fact I had over 200 apartment units and around 25 houses I bought at the tax sale auctions but was forced or decided to sell all of them and get out rather than finish un-rehabbed properties and rent units out there. There were lot’s of break in’s where we did not have a single tool or loose piece of materials but the street people would run through and do $10k in damages in one night, just for fun.
You would think since we were employing around 50 sub-contractors employing over 100 people who were working on our construction projects with crews full time would have enjoyed the jobs we bring and the money we distributed in materials and labor yet I can not think of a single project property undamaged by vagrants.
Even a block or two from the plaza we had the same problems as I had a huge mansion property within two blocks of the north east corner of the plaza area (Going north goes straight into downtown Kansas City) that some of the street people showed their appreciation for our willingness to clean up their community by burning down my carriage house.
You can have lot’s of fun their, just don’t include me!
GR