What are the Best College Towns for Property Investors?

A new report from foreclosure information web site RealtyTrac showed that the top destinations real estate investors should go to for purchasing rental properties and flipping, the company said in a statement.

To determine the top college towns, the company gathered data from the National Center for Education Statistics, examining public four-year universities with 20,000 or more new students in 2012 and found in counties with an unemployment rate of below 6.2 percent, the national average, in June 2014.  

The findings revealed that Akron, Ohio, where the University of Akron is located, ranked number one with an average rental revenue of 14 percent among the top ten best college cities for buying rental properties. Second in rankings is Trenton, New Jersey where the Thomas Edison State College is located with an annual gross rental income of 13.20 percent. Gainsville, Florida ranks third with 11.34 percent annual rental gross income.

Cincinnati, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Dekalb, Illinois; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Kent, Ohio; Lincoln Nebraska and Fort Lauderdale, Florida completed the top ten lists with gross annual rental income not lower than 8.79 percent.

The towns were ranked by getting their annual gross rental revenues based on fair market rent records from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The rents were then divided by the average of the town’s median sales prices from January up to August 2014, the company said in a statement.

As for top ten best college towns for flipping, the first on the list was Minneapolis, Minnesota with a return on investment (ROI) of as high as 65.59 percent. Next is Seattle, Washington, with an ROI of 61.88 percent, followed by Lincoln, Nebraska, which is where the University of Nebraska is located, with an ROI of 55.01 percent. It was the second time the town of Lincoln appeared on RealtyTrac’s list.   

The towns of San Francisco, California; Trenton, New Jersey; Gainsville, Florida; Denver, Colorado; Cincinnati, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; and Raleigh, North Carolina filled the ranks of the top ten list.

The towns were ranked based on average gross return on investment (ROI) percentage of residential houses flipped from January to August 2014. According to the report, not all college towns had enough sales or records to show to make it to the list.

“College towns are often insulated from the real estate and economic storms that buffet other local housing markets, providing real estate investors a somewhat protected environment in which to either buy and hold rental properties for long-term cash or fix-and-flip homes for a short-term profit,” RealtyTrac said in a statement.  

“Investing in college towns can come with some risks--think high turnover and wear-and-tear for rentals and a smaller pool of homebuyers for fix-and-flips--but the potential profits available in the best of these markets can go a long way to make up for those risks,” it added.

RealtyTrac also created an interactive visual for 95 college towns best for renting and flipping.

Real estate agents in the city may want to turn their attention to the rental and flipping markets in these top ten towns for their potential for growth. As they do, they can maximize their reach by taking advantage of disruptive video marketing technologies to market their listings.

Realbiz Media Group, Inc. RBIZ is a Florida-based digital media company that develops disruptive proprietary video marketing software that agents and their brokers can use to promote their virtual tour listings online.

Its Virtual Tour Program allows real estate sellers to create virtual tours and presentations that are optimized for mobile viewing and could be syndicated through social media for only $29.95 a month.

The program features a video search engine optimization (VSEO) tool that automatically generates meta tags and descriptions for virtual tours and listings that agents have uploaded to the platform so that they could be found easily by consumers online.

To learn more about Realbiz Media and its products, contact sales@realbizmediagroup.com or call 1.888.REAL.BIZ (888.732.5249).