Investors play a valuable part in adding life in the communities they enter by identifying and purchasing run down houses and restoring them so that they are vibrant parts of the neighborhood. These homes are purchased, renovated, and sold to those individuals who become your neighbors.
As a successful investor, nurture this part of your mission statement so that cities see you as a value-added part of their community. This requires intentionally becoming aware of the needs in your community and connecting with your city so that you can partner on opportunities. Ways you can become aware are through city funded neighborhood improvement initiatives, grants as well as your local, state and National Realtor Associations.
NAR is cultivating partnerships through its Transforming Neighborhoods programs. The program provides realtor/investors with the opportunity to learn along side their local partners about the underlying factors that keep vacant and abandoned lots and homes “stuck in decline” and explore ways to bring these properties back to productive use to create vibrant and equitable communities.
The mission of Center for Community Progress is to foster strong, equitable communities where vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties are transformed into assets for neighbors and neighborhoods. Founded in 2010, Community Progress is the leading national, nonprofit resource for urban, suburban, and rural communities seeking to address the full cycle of property revitalization. They work to ensure that public, private, and community leaders have the knowledge and capacity to create and sustain change. It also works to ensure that all communities have the policies, tools, and resources they need to support the effective, equitable reuse of vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties.
Good investors look to be part of the community solution… it is more than just a profit center. Imagine driving through a neighborhood and seeing an abandoned house left to deteriorate because a family member has gone into a nursing home and families just do not want to be troubled with it.
I can share a recent example of a home located in a neighborhood in my town. It sat vacant for over two years and it was continuing to fall in disrepair with landscaping over growing and mold festering in the basement. It happened one day that I received a call from their financial advisor who said, “they don’t want to invest anything more in this home, that they just want to give it away to a local church.” I, as an investor connected them with my local church who has a home renovation program. We are now renovating it and will commit it back to a family.
Whatever your interest is, real estate investing can be an incredibly beneficial industry, from giving back to your community to helping provide improved homes to families.
