Student turned investor bullish on hometown investment options

He learned about the opportunities provided by real estate investment while in school, and his properties in that market may soon help him become a full-timer.

“In London you can get 4- and 5-bedroom properties for around $175-300,000,” London-based investor Kevin Miller told Canadian Real Estate Wealth. “So we specialize in that market. It’s still obtainable to get your 300- and 400-dollar-a-month cash flows, even upwards to 800-dollar-a-month cash flow, in a single-family home.”
 
Miller, who is 24, started investing almost straight out of school.
 
“I got a job in an office right out of school but I didn’t really like that. When I lived at Fanshawe, I was charged $400 for my room per month,” Miller said. “I did the math; there were six rooms in that building, so the landlord was making $2,400 a month. So my very first year at school I thought, ‘This is definitely what I want to do.’”
 
Currently, Miller owns four separate investment properties but, perhaps surprisingly, he has been focusing mostly on single-family homes in London.
 
“To manage single-family homes, it seems a little bit easier to do it by myself; when I do expand, diversify, get a few more people working on my team, then I definitely think I’ll be able to jump into student rental,” he said. As of now, I do have one up at Fanshawe College area that’s a student rental, but it’s right on the verge. So it could be a single-family rental or it could be a 4-bedroom, and we’re getting $1,200 a month there.”
 
“So I got into that one at a $125,000,” Miller continued. “I’ve put about $15,000 into it, bringing me to about $140,000, and now I’m renting it out for $1,400 a month, which is a great return on investment considering that it was the first home that I bought when I was 20, so I only had to put 5 per cent down.”

Source: http://www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca/news/student-turned-investor-bullish-on-hometown-investment-options-205413.aspx