Slum Lord

Does anyone have any books/articles that they'd recommend about how some real estate folks made their first millions providing cheap housing? I just can't shake the feeling that this is a big opportunity in certain areas if you can identify the flow of people/work

13 Comments
 

The slum lord title is a joke

I didn't say they were, and I'm not conflating the two. If a city is growing (via influx of people and/or jobs), there may be a lack of supply in housing. This drives prices up creating a need for additional supply. If you can construct cheaper/quicker rental housing for individuals who are looking for simple housing while they solidify their job prospects / look for a house, then that's an opportunity. Not everyone in the world is looking to pay exorbitant rental rates so they have access to a pool as an amenity.

 

I don't support redevelopment manufactured housing as we need more of it (in my opinion). But if you are interested in covered land plays, you should really be looking at manufactured housing. Many of the older parks are in the middle of fantastic locations and the highest and best use is not the mobile home park that it currently is. They are phenomenal covered land plays and many each year (unfortunately) sell and get redeveloped to office, apartments, etc. 

 

I don't know any books on the subject, but this is how Related was started, though it seems like they try not to advertise it these days.

And if you want to go further back, anything on the Astor family.  Their fortune was mainly built through owning Manhattan slums.

 

KClubs

Astor family eh. This is exactly what I'm looking for. I've met with some old school family owned shops that are 1 to 3 generations in and this is how many of them began, but like you said, they don't like to advertise it as such

I mean, I wouldn't mine anything on them for valuable modern day lessons.  They bought land between 14th and 125th St when that was all farmland and just waited for the city to expand towards them.  Not exactly a very replicable strategy these days...

 
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Somewhat an offshoot, but the book "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond somewhat covers this. It's a non-fiction read about poor families in Milwaukee, WI. It isnt exactly a "how-to" but it does cover one lady who owns a lot of houses in the slums how there; basically bought one, would re-finance, then buy another. Goes somewhat in-depth about how the system is played; basically, she didn't need to make upgrades to her properties because they were never inspected and the tenants didn't want to get kicked out/find another place. LL would spend the first day of every month going around collecting rent because that's when everyone received their welfare. It just seemed like a constant cycle of finding and evicting tenants, so it's not super passive.  

Also it covered a guy who owned a trailer park, which goes less into it but that's another avenue to look at as well. 

 

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