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Congratulations, you've rediscovered the relationship between rental yields and desirability. It holds everywhere: a new apartment in the capital will be at 2-4%, while a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere is at 10%+. As the landlords say: 'location, location, location'. It's free money, just buy the crappiest real estate and sail to the bahamas with your ill-gotten gains. If only you could find the tenants.
In a vain attempt to hijack this into the "Get rich on real estate TODAY!" thread on The Motte...
I ran a cross a twitter thread years ago that made the case for investing in multi-family real estate in "forever emerging" neighborhoods. This would be areas outside of an obviously attractive Metro that may be seen as "up and coming." That's easy enough to look up right now. The tricky part is finding something in that emerging neighborhood that both keeps it from becoming just the next development path out of the metro, and also prevents it from going bust. The thread mentioned a few military bases that are within 1 - 2 hours of a major metro as an example; the Military doesn't go out of business, so the area won't disappear even in a recession, but because the military skews younger, lower-middle-class-er, and male-er, a trendy Whole Foods anchored shopping center with the $3k 1-bedrooms isn't going to pop up either. These are properties with cap rates higher than you would expect but without the occasional sunk cost of an eviction, the higher rates of repair due to lack of maintenance, crime, etc.
Any hardcore Real Estate folks on here care to comment. I have no idea if the thread I'm (half) citing is valid ... not even if I'm representing it totally correctly as this is from memory at the moment.
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Yea I thought everyone knew the rental yields here vary.
Also key to this cap rate difference is desirable areas have high land values to capex values. Capex values depreciate. Land usually appreciates. A lot of the difference in yield is just difference in depreciation. And some of it is poor people don’t pay rent and require more owner work.
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