The windy, sunny, and tree-lined streets of Syracuse are a pleasant place to start your real estate investing business, especially if operating investment properties is your forte. Between the market’s low-priced homes, an ample supply of renters every year, and a bustling local economy, Syracuse is a great location—assuming you know how to work with the market’s quirks. But when I first started looking for investment property in Syracuse NY, I didn’t quite appreciate what made it special.

It isn’t a city for dropping millions on a property to command five-digit rents, nor is it a place where making a collection of upmarket rentals will guarantee a high ROI. My initial mistake was interpreting minimal activity in a particular slice of the market—the expensive one—as being evidence of insufficient supply. Of course, I later learned that the most active segments tend to be where you’ll get the best margins as an investor.

With that mistake under my belt, I eventually switched strategies and targeted the downmarket, accumulating dozens of low-buying and low-renting price properties that I proceeded to operate for years. For me, changing gears required learning a lot more about how to value investment units and also how to use my valuations to negotiate with skeptical potential sellers. But for you, it’s feasible to learn the right way to approach Syracuse as an investor before you start to compete there. So let’s take a look at the market and how to find investment property as efficiently as possible.

What’s Going On With the Syracuse Real Estate Market?

Overall, the Syracuse real estate market is typical of upstate New York. Houses won’t stay on the market for long, even though average selling prices are on the lower side. Rents are on the low side of average, and there’s plenty of demand each year from the returning class of students at the local university. Of course, choosing to serve the student demographic entails spending a bit more on maintenance and repairs—assuming you want your units to retain their resale value as they’re generating cash flow.

Aside from that, there’s some construction activity, some renovation activity, and a small amount of urban redevelopment, but overall, you should expect the Syracuse market to remain largely the same over the next few years as there’s no catalyst for things to change. That makes it a great option for investment property because you won’t need to spend as much time keeping up with market dynamics and local changes to maintain your rental units.

Nonetheless, there are a few unique challenges with the Syracuse market, including:

• More motivated sellers than moneyed buyers
• Older housing stock that’s very commonly in mediocre condition
• Limited access to contractor labor
• A plethora of risky tenants like groups of rowdy students
• Somewhat slow activity and minimal housing stock in the upmarket segment

Thankfully, all of these challenges are very navigable, and plenty of real estate investors are proud to call Syracuse the home of their businesses. Still, you’ll need to plan for each of these issues. And before that, you’ll need to know how to find the best investment property and structure your offer appropriately.

How To Find Investment Property in Syracuse NY

In general, you’ll want to use multiple methods to find leads for investment property in Syracuse NY. The point of using a few is that when one of your standbys dries up or doesn’t have any properties that are a good fit for your business, you can look elsewhere rather than settling for something subpar.

For example, here are some approaches that I’ve found are worth it:

• Using MLSs to view public listings
• Setting up billboards for advertising my company as a buyer
• Searching public records for pre-foreclosures and pitching homeowners directly
• Looking for off market leads

For finding investment property in Syracuse NY specifically, I highly suggest keeping an eye out for pre-foreclosures and learning how to scrounge leads for off market homes.

Pre-foreclosures are favorable because you’ll have the chance to make aggressive offers to homeowners who are inclined to take those offers. But you’ll need a stellar home valuation system and a solid method to estimate your rental income as the previous owner’s mortgage payments and prior appraisal value may be dramatically different from your preferences. In other words, Syracuse is a rich market for bargains provided that you have the valuation know-how to identify them and negotiate the purchasing price accordingly.

Off-market properties can include pre-foreclosure homes, but they can also include properties that show no indication of being underwater on a mortgage. Finding off-market homes is difficult and you’ll need to get creative. Setting up fliers, billboards, and social media campaigns can help get the leads flowing in, but you’ll also need to do a lot of networking with other real estate investors and even members of the public to ensure you can find people who would be willing to sell their homes if they were made the right offer at the right time.

There Are Better Ways To Find Leads And Value Homes

If you’re dreading the process of scraping public records and hunting down off-market investment property in Syracuse NY, you should know that you don’t have to tackle this challenge alone. When I was looking for my first rental unit in the city, I found that I could get a lot more leads and more effectively determine the pricing of the corresponding properties by teaming up with HomeVestors® as an independently owned and operated franchise owner. With HomeVestors®, you’ll learn how to use the powerful ValueChek® home valuation software that easily lets you determine the difference between Syracuse property appraisals and what you’ll be able to get in return as rent.

Plus, HomeVestors® franchise owners are linked to a massive network of real estate professionals, so you’ll get quality mentorship and a rockstar group of people to work with if you want to team up for a deal. As if that weren’t enough, all members are privy to a nationwide lead generation platform that excels at scooping up leads for homes whether they’re on or off market. I would never have built up my portfolio of investment property in Syracuse NY without the leads, people, and valuation tools that HomeVestors® set me up with. And if I hadn’t taken the plunge to become a franchise owner, my real estate investing business would never have grown into what it is today.

Learn more about finding the best investment property in Syracuse NY and anywhere else by requesting information on joining HomeVestors® today. 

Each franchise office is independently owned and operated