tlp

How Cincinnati Property Managers Actually Handle Evictions

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:45:09 GMT

The Hamilton County timeline from a missed rent payment to a set-out; and why TLP's Izzy Ong treats every case that reaches a magistrate as a failure of the process, not a win.

TLP Property Management has a 100% success rate when eviction and small claims cases actually reach a Hamilton County magistrate, but that number is almost beside the point. Izzy Ong, director of operations for TLP, is direct that appearing in court at all is a loss, not a win, and the entire process TLP has built is designed to resolve delinquency before a filing ever becomes necessary.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Izzy Ong , director of operations for TLP Property Management, who has run the company's tenant relations and eviction process since 2021 and now oversees the property management division for both TLP's own portfolio and its third-party clients across Greater Cincinnati. Ong's operational, day-to-day view of the eviction process, handled largely through a team based in the Philippines, gives this episode unusually specific detail on how the legal and rental-assistance mechanics actually play out in Hamilton County.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers TLP's approach to shielding landlord clients from direct tenant conversations during the process, and more detail on post-eviction collections.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

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How the Eviction Process Actually Works in Hamilton County

The legal timeline in Greater Cincinnati runs on a specific, predictable schedule that most first-time landlords never see mapped out in full. Rent is due on the first, considered late on the second, but TLP's leases build in a five-day grace period before late fees apply on the sixth. On the fifth, every tenant without a logged payment gets an automated reminder. After the late fee kicks in, dedicated tenant relations officers begin calling, texting, and emailing every delinquent tenant directly, not to threaten action, but to find out what's actually happening and give the tenant a chance to explain.

Notices are typically posted around the tenth or twelfth, always on a pre-announced date the tenant has already been told about, so the notice itself is not a surprise. In Ohio, a three-day pay-or-vacate notice gives the tenant three business days to cure the balance before the case is endorsed to an attorney, who files immediately. That filing appears on the tenant's landlord-tenant history and background check the moment it's filed, regardless of the eventual outcome, a detail TLP makes a point of communicating clearly upfront.

What's Working in Cincinnati

TLP's process is built around a small number of deliberate operational choices that consistently produce better outcomes than moving straight to legal action.

Reach out personally before any notice is ever posted. TLP's tenant relations officers call, text, and email every delinquent tenant individually in the days after a late fee applies, rather than moving directly to a three-day notice. This single step, more than any automation, is what TLP credits with resolving the majority of delinquencies before they ever require legal filing.
Give tenants a specific, prior-announced date for when notices will post. Tenants are told in advance which day notices go out, and every tenant with a balance gets one on the same day, reducing the shock and hostility of an unannounced notice appearing on the door.
Keep landlord clients insulated from direct tenant conversations. TLP does not involve the property owner in the emotional back-and-forth of a delinquency case. The landlord is notified once a case is formally endorsed to the eviction attorney, not before, which protects both the tenant's dignity during a difficult conversation and the landlord's time.
Proactively connect tenants to rental assistance rather than waiting for them to find it. TLP's automated messaging includes direct references to St. Vincent de Paul, Hamilton County JFS, and similar organizations from the very first late notice, and once a tenant applies, TLP's own team takes over the paperwork, since they know the process well enough to move it faster than a tenant navigating it alone.
Collect employment, vehicle, and identification details wherever possible, especially from inherited tenants. TLP encourages lease renewals partly because the free renewal application captures Social Security number and date of birth, information that materially improves the odds of collecting on a post-eviction judgment, and works with an eviction attorney whose firm also handles collections.

What is not working: assuming a court appearance represents success. TLP's 100% record when cases reach a magistrate is real, but the team treats every filing that reaches that point as a process failure, not a win, since the entire system is designed to resolve delinquency long before a courtroom becomes necessary.

Lessons From the Field: A Rental Assistance Approval That Arrived on the Day of Set-Out

The outcome, in this specific case, was that assistance funding came through just before the scheduled set-out, allowing the case to be resolved without the tenant losing their home. Ong describes it as a close call precisely because the timing worked out, not because the system reliably works that way.

Rental assistance timing can run right up against the final eviction deadline. Approval arriving on the day of a scheduled set-out is not a hypothetical risk, it is something TLP has experienced directly.
Written confirmation from the assistance organization, not the tenant, is what allows a case to pause or be dismissed. TLP will not delay legal proceedings based on a tenant's word alone that assistance is coming; they require direct written confirmation from the organization itself.
A tenant's application being in process does not guarantee protection from set-out. The process moving forward on its own legal timeline, independent of a pending assistance application, is exactly why TLP pushes tenants to apply as early as possible in the delinquency period.
Close calls like this reinforce why proactive outreach matters from day one. Ong and Slocomb both frame the earliest phase of the process, personal outreach before any notice is even posted, as the highest-leverage point for avoiding this kind of last-minute risk entirely.

Where Cincinnati Buyers Are Bidding Above Asking in 2026

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:42:43 GMT

A $450,000 Loveland listing sold for $570,000 cash. Ethan Bishop on which Greater Cincinnati submarkets are drawing multiple offers, which have quietly cooled, and the two-generation demand pattern driving both.

A buyer in Loveland waived inspection, put 20% down, and escalated to $536,000 on a house listed at $450,000, then still lost to an all-cash offer at $570,000 closing in 10 days. Ethan Bishop, a top-producing agent with the Chabris Group at Keller Williams Seven Hills Realty who has sold over 200 properties across Greater Cincinnati in six years, watched that bidding war firsthand, and it's a clear signal of where 2026 demand is concentrating hardest.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Ethan Bishop , a real estate agent with the Chabris Group at Keller Williams Seven Hills Realty who has sold over 200 properties across Greater Cincinnati since going full-time in 2020. Bishop's active client base, concentrated among millennial buyers competing for starter and move-up homes, gives him real-time visibility into which submarkets are seeing genuine bidding wars versus which have quietly cooled.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode covers additional detail on new construction pricing across the eastern Cincinnati suburbs and more on how street-level variation plays out in specific neighborhoods.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

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Where Cincinnati Buyers Are Competing Hardest in 2026

The Two-Generation Demand Pattern Reshaping Eastern Cincinnati

A consistent thesis runs underneath most of the growth Bishop is describing: baby boomers looking to downsize out of oversized homes while staying near adult children, and millennials looking to upgrade into more space, are both converging on the same handful of walkable, small-town-feeling submarkets east of I-275. Milford, Loveland, and Lebanon each offer a version of the same formula, a charming, often century-old downtown corridor with retail, dining, and bars on the ground floor and apartments above, paired with genuinely developable agricultural land just 10 to 15 minutes away where new construction can meet contemporary buyer expectations.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Bishop's read on the current market surfaces a few clear, repeatable patterns for buyers and investors evaluating specific submarkets.

Three-plus bedroom homes are moving dramatically faster than two-bedroom product. A Mount Washington-area listing on the Anderson Township border generated eight offers within 36 hours, all above asking, while comparable two-bedroom listings in Norwood and Pleasant Ridge sit on market considerably longer.
Street-level due diligence matters more than neighborhood reputation, everywhere in Greater Cincinnati. Evanston and East Walnut Hills are the most extreme examples, where a single street can separate a stable, appreciating block from one with active safety concerns, but Bishop notes even Loveland has specific streets worth avoiding despite the submarket's overall strength.
A single aggressive cash offer can reset comps for an entire submarket, even at a price the property may not objectively be worth. Bishop's Loveland example illustrates how one buyer's willingness to pay $570,000 for a property he valued closer to $500,000 to $525,000 becomes the new data point future appraisals and listings will reference.
New construction pricing displays differently by builder, and that matters for underwriting affordability. D.R. Horton's advertised prices tend to reflect actual final cost, while builders like Fisher Homes often show a base price well below what most buyers end up paying once upgrades are included.
Baby boomer downsizing demand is an underexploited multifamily development opportunity in Milford, Loveland, and Lebanon. These buyers want walkable proximity to a small-town downtown without maintaining a large single-family home, but Bishop notes there is limited existing ground-level rental or small-multifamily product built specifically to meet that demand.

17 Real Estate Mistakes Cincinnati Investors Keep Making

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:18:41 GMT

Off-street parking, galvanized plumbing, school district lines that don't follow township borders, and a tax bill that can quadruple at closing. The Cincinnati-specific due diligence most investors skip.

A single-family home in Northside with off-street parking sits on the market roughly four months faster than a comparable home without it, and commands about $50,000 more in purchase price. That gap, driven entirely by a feature many out-of-state investors treat as an afterthought, is one of 17 recurring, Cincinnati-specific mistakes Ian Cruz and Slocomb Reed catalogued from over a decade of investing and property management across Greater Cincinnati .

This analysis draws from a joint discussion between Ian Cruz and Slocomb Reed , co-hosts of the Cincy REI Show, covering 17 recurring mistakes they have observed among real estate investors across Greater Cincinnati. Both hosts operate active multifamily and single-family portfolios and provide third-party property management, giving this list a level of hands-on, deal-level specificity that goes beyond generic investing advice.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode covers all 17 mistakes in the hosts' original ranked order, including several additional stories not covered here.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

Subscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Cincinnati's Hidden Boundaries: Municipalities, School Districts, and Block-by-Block Variation

Several Cincinnati neighborhoods sit inside the city's boundaries but are legally independent municipalities, including Norwood, St. Bernard, and Elmwood Place . This matters beyond trivia: within the actual City of Cincinnati, trash and recycling collection for one-to-four-unit properties is included in property taxes, while across most of the rest of the metro, owners pay for waste collection separately. Investors who assume a property's municipal status based on its neighborhood name alone can misjudge both utility costs and applicable regulations.

What Cincinnati's Property Tax and Reassessment Cycle Means for Underwriting

Hamilton County reassesses property values broadly every three years, with a larger, more comprehensive reassessment every six years. The 2023 triennial reassessment, following closely behind the COVID-era appreciation run-up, produced unusually large increases and drew national attention. Since 2023, Cincinnati has continued appreciating, ranking fifth nationally in home sale price growth with a 6.7% year-over-year increase between March 2025 and March 2026, meaning further reassessment increases are plausible, even if unlikely to match 2023's scale.

The mechanism investors most often overlook is what happens to the tax basis at the point of sale. A property purchased cheaply by a prior owner, a house flipper who bought for $50,000 and sold for $200,000 after renovation, for example, carries a tax basis reflecting that original low purchase price. Once the county reassesses to the new sale price, the buyer's property tax bill can quadruple from what the seller had been paying. Underwriting to the seller's current tax bill rather than a reassessment at the actual purchase price is a common and costly miscalculation. The Hamilton County Auditor's website allows investors to input a hypothetical purchase price directly and see the recalculated tax figure before closing.

What's Working in Cincinnati

The bulk of the hosts' list centers on operational and due-diligence mistakes specific to Cincinnati's older housing stock and its tenant expectations.

Always provide on-site laundry in multifamily properties. This is a leasing issue more than a direct revenue driver. Listings without laundry on site lose applications and better-qualified tenants regardless of neighborhood, even though coin laundry itself rarely generates meaningful profit.
Underwrite parking as a core amenity, not an afterthought. The rule of thumb is a minimum of one parking spot per unit, with one spot per bedroom being ideal. Cincinnati's car-dependent culture and limited public transit make inaccessible or absent parking a leasing dealbreaker in nearly every submarket.
Check for flood zones before closing, even away from obvious water. Small creeks and minor waterways throughout Greater Cincinnati carry flood zone designations tied to flooding events from over a century ago, often in areas that do not visually read as flood-prone today.
Identify your foundation type and its specific failure mode. Poured concrete foundations are the most durable but develop thermal expansion cracks over time. Concrete block foundations are more vulnerable to failure under water pressure buildup. Stone foundations, common in properties over a hundred years old, let water pass through rather than building pressure, trading a wetter basement for exceptional long-term durability.
Treat galvanized steel plumbing as a near-certain replacement cost. Used during the Vietnam War era as a copper substitute, galvanized steel corrodes from the inside, making visual inspection unreliable. Budget for full replacement whenever it's found.
Understand aluminum wiring's insurance implications rather than assuming automatic replacement is required. Aluminum wiring, another Vietnam War-era copper substitute, requires specially rated fixtures and connectors due to its thermal expansion properties. Its presence can trigger insurance exclusions or higher premiums, and in some cases push a property into surplus lines coverage, an added cost worth underwriting upfront.
Evaluate knob and tube wiring on a case-by-case basis with your inspector and insurer. This copper-based, very old wiring type often shows up on lower-amperage circuits like light fixtures and ceiling fans, frequently left in place even after a prior remodel replaced wiring for higher-demand circuits like HVAC or ovens. It can be fragile enough that routine work, like swapping an outlet, causes it to crumble and require full replacement.
Always get a sewer scope, regardless of the property's age or apparent function. A functioning toilet does not rule out a collapsed line, root intrusion, or a significant grease and debris buildup inside cast iron drain stacks, particularly in multifamily buildings where heavier use accelerates these issues. Clay sewer laterals, common in pre- and post-World War II construction once a line extends past the house, are especially prone to this.
Choose service providers based on the quality of service delivered, not the lowest quoted fee. Because general contractor licensing does not exist in Greater Cincinnati, the bar for calling yourself a contractor is low, and cheap labor is often genuinely cheap for a reason. The same logic applies to property management: a manager charging 6% has meaningfully less revenue to invest in service quality than one charging a more typical 10%, even though the lower number looks better on a spreadsheet.
Engage a property manager early in the due diligence process, not days before closing. A property manager who will operate a building for years has a different incentive structure than an agent or lender who gets paid once at closing, and often has location-specific insight, like crime data or vacancy patterns, that no one else in the transaction has reason to raise.
Match your renovation scope to what the location's rent ceiling can actually support. Replacing a boiler system with mini-splits, upgrading electrical service, and installing granite counters and soft-close cabinets does not guarantee a corresponding rent increase in Cincinnati's C-class brick bunker stock. If comparable rents in the immediate area don't already support the higher number, the renovation cost will not return on investment.

Why Cincinnati Multifamily Investors Are Renovating Less in 2026

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:12:32 GMT

JD Schmerge brokers Greater Cincinnati multifamily and operates a 7-unit in South Covington. Why tenants aren't paying for upgraded finishes, why insurance and taxes now outweigh interest rates, and how much to renovate before selling.

Cincinnati multifamily has historically traded at 7% to 8% cap rates, a spread wide enough above today's roughly 6.5% debt cost that the market never saw the same distress hitting cities that traded at 4% and 5% caps during the low-rate years. JD Schmerge, a multifamily broker with Sabre Group who also owns a 7-unit property in South Covington, has a front-row view of both sides of that math right now, as a broker underwriting deals and as an operator absorbing insurance and tax increases firsthand.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with JD Schmerge , a multifamily broker at Sabre Group with over eight years of experience, primarily selling properties under 75 units across Greater Cincinnati. Schmerge's dual perspective, brokering deals across the market while personally operating a 7-unit value-add property in South Covington, gives this episode a level of real-time detail on financing, insurance, and taxes that pure sales data alone would not surface.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Schmerge's take on Ohio's proposed property tax legislation and more detail on how school district board of revision cases work.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

Subscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Cincinnati Multifamily Geography: South Covington and the Northern Kentucky Case

South Covington , roughly two miles south of the Ohio River and just before the Wallace Woods neighborhood, is where Schmerge owns a 7-unit value-add property purchased in September 2025. He describes the building as a C-minus or D-class asset at acquisition, in a blue-collar neighborhood where he is deliberately avoiding over-improving finishes, with a goal of reaching B-minus or B-class within two years.

Why Cincinnati Multifamily Avoided the Distress Other Markets Saw

Three structural factors explain why 2025 was one of Cincinnati's lowest multifamily transaction volume years without producing the kind of forced, distressed sales seen in other metros.

Cincinnati's traditionally wide cap rate spread over debt cost is the biggest factor. Markets that traded at 4% to 5% cap rates during low interest rate years now face debt costs that exceed their in-place returns, forcing refinances that do not pencil. Cincinnati's historical 7% to 8% cap rate range, even with debt costs around 6.5%, still preserves a workable spread, meaning deals bought at the top of the last cycle are still refinancing at debt service coverage ratios that generally work.

Limited new construction keeps supply pressure lower than in faster-growing metros. Cincinnati typically has only 2% to 3% of existing multifamily inventory under construction at any given time, compared to double-digit percentages in some primary markets betting heavily on continued population growth.

Insurance and property tax increases have become the two biggest underwriting variables , overshadowing interest rates in some cases. Schmerge's own South Covington property carries an insurance premium more than double what the previous owner paid, a gap he attributes to the building's 1930s construction and outdated mechanicals rather than any error on the prior owner's part. Insurance underwriting for older Cincinnati-area multifamily now runs roughly $600 per unit as a rough baseline, though square footage, age, and mechanical updates all shift that figure meaningfully.

Property tax reassessment mechanics differ sharply between Ohio and Kentucky. On the Kentucky side, a sale typically triggers reassessment to the purchase price within the first 12 months of ownership, with subsequent reassessments roughly every three years, and increases have generally stayed modest. On the Ohio side, Hamilton County's 2023 triennial reassessment averaged a 65% increase from 2020 values, a shock that has made property tax forecasting a much bigger underwriting conversation for Cincinnati real estate than it has historically been. A proposed Ohio bill addressing property taxes for owner-occupants is being watched closely, since any reduction in that tax base will likely need to be recovered elsewhere, a risk school districts and counties are already responding to with more aggressive board of revision activity against recently sold properties, particularly around Ohio's drop-and-swap strategy, which Schmerge notes is already facing more scrutiny in Columbus and Cleveland than it currently does in Cincinnati.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Schmerge's brokerage experience surfaces a specific, quantifiable framework for how much renovation work a seller should actually complete before bringing a value-add multifamily deal to market.

Leave meaningful upside for the next buyer rather than fully stabilizing a property. Schmerge's rule of thumb: renovating as few as 10% of units at top-of-market rents can establish proof of concept, though that threshold is more reliable on larger properties, a 30-to-50-unit building rather than a small one where a single renovated unit is not a real sample size. Renovating beyond roughly 70% of units starts producing diminishing returns for the seller, since it shrinks the pool of buyers looking specifically for a value-add opportunity.
Selling unrealized upside commands a lower cap rate than selling in-place cash flow. Schmerge is direct that brokers can sell a buyer pool on future NOI growth potential far more easily than they can sell current in-place performance, since in-place NOI is fixed while unrealized upside lets a buyer's imagination, and their eventual lender, justify a stronger valuation.
Consider turnkey acquisitions specifically because most buyers avoid them. Schmerge estimates roughly 98% of buyers are chasing value-add deals, which has made genuinely turnkey, cash-flowing properties comparatively overlooked and less competitive to acquire, provided a buyer verifies the turnkey claim is real rather than cosmetic.
Underwrite insurance and tax increases explicitly rather than assuming the seller's current expenses will hold. Schmerge's own experience paying more than double the previous owner's insurance premium illustrates how easily an underinsured or outdated policy can distort a seller's reported operating expenses.
Match renovation spend to what the current tenant base is actually willing to pay for. Echoing Ian and Slocomb's own 73-unit portfolio decision, Schmerge agrees that in the current market, upgrading finishes tenants are not paying a premium for is money that will not come back in rent growth, and that capital is better spent on safety and mechanical improvements that do not show up as prominently in marketing photos.

Lessons From the Field: What a First-Time Owner-Operator Learned From His Own Deal

Schmerge closed on his 7-unit South Covington property in September 2025, after years of brokering multifamily deals for other buyers without ever taking one down himself. He had been waiting for a turnkey, cash-flowing deal to simply present itself, but as the end of the year approached and he wanted to capture bonus depreciation, he decided a heavier value-add deal was the better move despite not being his original plan.

The outcome nine months in: full occupancy, though leasing the renovated units took more showings and slightly longer than expected, partly because the renovation and initial leasing period fell during December and January, typically the slowest leasing months of the year. Schmerge did not have to lower his advertised rent to fill the units despite the slower timeline.

A turnkey deal may never simply appear, even for a broker who sees every listing in the market. Schmerge waited a meaningful amount of time expecting one to surface before deciding a value-add deal made more sense given his tax planning timeline.
Verify the actual insurance policy in place rather than assuming the seller's premium reflects the building's true risk. A policy that looks affordable on paper may simply be underinsured, a gap that only becomes visible once a new buyer gets their own quotes.
Self-managing a first value-add deal builds underwriting judgment that brokerage alone does not provide. Schmerge specifically credits hands-on renovation and leasing experience with sharpening his ability to evaluate line-item renovation costs for other clients' deals.
Winter leasing timelines require real patience even when the fundamentals are sound. More showings and a longer fill time in December and January did not require a rent reduction, but did require adjusting expectations for how quickly newly renovated units would lease.
A blue-collar tenant base sets a ceiling on how aggressive renovation should be. Schmerge's plan to reach B-minus or B-class within two years, rather than pursuing a full luxury reposition, reflects a deliberate match between renovation scope and what the local tenant base can support.

Cincinnati's Fourplex Playbook: Why Brick Bunkers Still Work

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:50:25 GMT

Bret Halsey went from pro soccer to 70-plus units in under three years, 14 of them fourplexes. How Cincinnati's repeating 1960s floor plans make the city's most common multifamily building the easiest one to underwrite.

Bret Halsey went from playing professional soccer for FC Cincinnati to owning over 70 units in under three years, 14 of them fourplexes, almost entirely sourced through his own cold calling. His path into the market started with a single four-family in Pleasant Ridge , and it turned into a repeatable formula for identifying, financing, and flipping Cincinnati's most common multifamily property type: the 1960s brick bunker fourplex.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Bret Halsey , a former professional soccer player turned full-time real estate investor who has acquired over 70 units across Greater Cincinnati, primarily through direct-to-seller cold calling. Halsey's rapid transition from house hacker to active operator, sourcing nearly every deal himself, gives him unusually granular, hands-on knowledge of how Cincinnati's fourplex stock actually trades and renovates.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Halsey's cold calling routine in detail and a story about a tenant-caused explosion that leveled one of his Price Hill fourplexes.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

ubscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Where Fourplex Investing Works Across Greater Cincinnati

Pleasant Ridge is where Halsey bought his first fourplex as an owner-occupant in September 2023, chosen partly for its proximity to his soccer training facility in Milford and partly because it hit the 1% rule with central heat and air already in place. Halsey specifically targeted this neighborhood, along with Silverton and Deer Park , as a middle ground between overpriced Oakley and Hyde Park and less desirable areas further out, describing it as sitting in the path of Oakley's gentrification spilling outward.
Oakley and Hyde Park are effectively priced out of fourplex cash flow for Halsey's model. A comparable four-unit in Hyde Park runs around $750,000 and does not cash flow at all, with Oakley only marginally better.
Norwood produced Halsey's first deal, a 45-unit property he found through nine months of cold calling and ultimately wholesaled, generating more profit than his entire year of professional soccer. Norwood also cost him a lesson: he passed on a fourplex on Bosworth Place in Pleasant Ridge priced at $270,000 to $280,000, only to see a comparable property on the same street sell for $410,000 six to nine months later.
Roselawn is, in Halsey's description, "an interesting street" almost entirely composed of fourplexes, where he has sold multiple properties to a mix of investors and owner-occupants, including one buyer who raised her daughter there.
Price Hill was Halsey's first West Side purchase, three auctioned fourplexes totaling 12 units bought for around $420,000 with six-month hard money, despite having no prior ownership experience on the West Side. One of those buildings was destroyed in a gas explosion caused by a non-paying tenant in March, a total loss that Halsey's replacement cost value insurance ultimately covered.
Bond Hill rounds out Halsey's early portfolio alongside his Pleasant Ridge and Norwood holdings, part of the initial 10-to-14-unit base he had built before scaling into larger deals.

Why 1960s Brick Bunker Fourplexes Are So Easy to Underwrite

Cincinnati's fourplex stock is remarkably uniform, built primarily in the 1960s (as early as the late 1940s, as late as the mid-1970s) in what Halsey and Slocomb both describe as a small handful of repeating brick-and-block floor plans. Because these are purpose-built multifamily structures rather than converted single-family homes, narrower buildings consistently produce one-bedroom units, while wider ones produce two-bedrooms, a pattern visible from the building's facade alone before ever stepping inside.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Halsey's approach to sourcing and financing fourplexes rests on a few specific, repeatable mechanics.

Niche down to a specific property type and neighborhood before cold calling at scale. Halsey struggled with unfocused calling until his first mailer-sourced Pleasant Ridge fourplex gave him a concrete anchor point, after which he could quote specific purchase and resale numbers to prospects with real confidence.
Use hard money and minimal down payment to preserve capital for scaling. Halsey's fourplex strategy relied on financing at or near 100% loan-to-value, sometimes blending 90% hard money with 10% private money, prioritizing equity capture and capital preservation over immediate cash flow.
Match the exit buyer to the neighborhood. In areas like Pleasant Ridge, Halsey can price a fourplex to attract an owner-occupant buyer willing to pay a premium for residential-style financing, while properties in neighborhoods like Roselawn or on the West Side more often sell to investors. Halsey notes fourplexes can trade for $100,000 to $120,000-plus per unit due to this owner-occupant financing advantage, compared to roughly $80,000 per unit for a 6-to-10-unit building with similar rents.
Focus renovation dollars on cosmetic upgrades, not mechanical overhauls. Adding a dishwasher, reglazing original tile white, installing butcher block counters or granite depending on the neighborhood, and updating light fixtures and hardware are Halsey's highest-return, lowest-complexity improvements. Projects that strayed into garage doors, foundation work, or unexpected roof and mold remediation were the ones that blew up his budgets.
Build direct-to-seller relationships with a personal story, not just an investor pitch. Halsey found that leading with his background as a professional athlete, rather than a generic investor cold call, opened doors with property owners who might have otherwise ignored the outreach entirely.

What is not working: expecting significant cash flow from a 100%-leveraged fourplex acquisition strategy. Halsey shifted his own model away from refinancing and holding these properties once he realized his highly leveraged deals were not generating meaningful cash flow, choosing instead to sell and roll proceeds into larger acquisitions.

Lessons From the Field: When a Tenant's Gas Line Destroyed a Fourplex

Halsey bought three auctioned fourplexes on Elberon Avenue in Price Hill in July 2024, his first purchase on Cincinnati's West Side, financed with six-month hard money and a mad dash to stabilize 12 units, several of which were not paying rent at closing.

The complication arrived roughly eight months later, in March, when a non-paying tenant Halsey was in the process of evicting turned on the gas in one of the units, causing an explosion that leveled the entire building. Halsey learned the difference between actual cash value and replacement cost value insurance coverage in real time as the claim unfolded; fortunately, he had replacement cost value coverage in place.

Verify replacement cost value coverage before an unplanned total loss forces you to find out the hard way. The distinction between actual cash value and replacement cost value determined whether this loss was financially survivable.
A fast-moving disaster can outpace your insurance company's own inspection timeline. The building was demolished before the adjuster ever saw it standing, which could have complicated the claim under different circumstances.
Entering a new submarket for the first time carries compounding risk. Halsey had zero prior ownership experience on the West Side when he bought these properties, layering unfamiliar-market risk on top of the non-paying tenants he inherited at closing.
A property in active eviction still carries real risk until the tenant is physically out. The non-paying tenant responsible for the explosion was already in the eviction process at the time of the incident.
Undervalued, highly leveraged acquisitions can absorb unplanned setbacks better than fully-priced deals. Because Halsey had captured meaningful equity at acquisition, the property's destruction did not represent the same financial exposure it would have on a deal bought at full market value with thin margins.

Cleves, Ohio: How a Master Lease Deal Repositioned a 24-Unit Property

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 19:09:23 GMT

Nine of 24 units were paying rent. Slocomb Reed took over management three months before closing, cleared the building, and proved higher rents; all before owning a share of it.

A cold email to Brandon Turner's BiggerPockets address led to a 24-unit property in Cleves, Ohio changing hands twice, first as a sale, then years later as a repurchase structured entirely around a three-month master lease. Slocomb Reed, co-host of the Cincy REI Show and operator of the property since 2019, used that window to take a building with 9 rent-paying tenants out of 24 units and reposition it before he owned a single share of it.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Slocomb Reed , co-host of the Cincy REI Show and a Cincinnati-based real estate investor and property manager who has self-operated multifamily properties across Greater Cincinnati for over a decade. Reed's firsthand account of buying, selling, and later repurchasing the same 24-unit Cleves property gives this episode an unusually complete before-and-after view of one deal across seven years.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Reed's early transition from full-time realtor to full-time operator, and more detail on onboarding tenants during a disorganized property management handoff.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

Subscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Cleves, Ohio: Cincinnati's Tertiary Market Inside the Beltway

Cleves sits far enough west inside I-275 that it behaves more like its own small tertiary market than a piece of Cincinnati proper. Reed describes it as geographically separate from the rest of the metro, reached either via Columbia Parkway and Highway 50 along the river, or via I-74 to I-275, exiting at Highway 125 south through Whitewater before connecting to Highway 50 into town.

The property's isolation from other multifamily buildings turned out to be a genuine asset rather than a limitation. With no neighboring apartment complexes visible from the site, and single-family homes surrounding it instead, Reed's team controls the entire perception of the property. Prospective tenants driving past see no comparable buildings signaling a lower rent ceiling or a rougher reputation, unlike properties on streets lined with multiple older four-family buildings where a single owner has little control over collective neighborhood perception.

Why a $775 One-Bedroom Works in Cleves but Fails in Westwood

The core lesson from this property is that a given rent number only makes sense relative to its specific submarket, not in isolation. Reed's Cleves one-bedrooms rent for $775 a month as of 2026, up from an assumed $575 ceiling when the deal closed in 2019. In a denser, higher-income Cincinnati neighborhood like Westwood , that same $775 for a comparably sized unit would represent a discount deep enough to attract only the most budget-constrained, least stable tenant pool, since better-qualified renters would simply pay $100 to $150 more for a nicer comparable unit down the block.

This is the kind of submarket-specific dynamic that separates successful Cincinnati real estate underwriting from a simple citywide rent comparison. A rent figure that would signal trouble in one neighborhood can represent a healthy, stable position in another, and the difference often comes down to utility structure, wage trends among the local employer base, and school district boundaries rather than anything visible in a standard market comp.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Reed's approach to smaller, geographically isolated properties comes down to a few consistent principles.

Self-manage when a property is too small for on-site staff but too far out for third-party interest. At 24 units and roughly 20 to 25 minutes from Reed's other holdings, the property was not large enough to justify dedicated payroll staff, and its lower rent base meant proportionally lower management fees, making it unattractive to higher-caliber third-party property managers.
Underwrite utility structure explicitly, not just rent. Water provider and heating fuel type can materially change a property's operating expense ratio. All-electric construction with tenant-controlled heat removes a major landlord cost that a comparable gas-heated building elsewhere would carry.
Treat isolation from other multifamily as a control advantage, not a drawback. A standalone building surrounded by single-family homes lets an operator fully control leasing standards and reputation, free from the comps and perception set by neighboring buildings.
Match qualification standards to the true local rent ceiling, not a citywide average. Rentometer, Zillow, and similar tools rarely have adequate comps for a submarket like Cleves. Reed's own leasing history became the most reliable comp source once enough data existed.

What is not working: assuming a rent figure that works in one submarket translates directly to another. A $775 one-bedroom that represents market rate in Cleves would represent a distressed, tenant-quality-compromising rent in a denser neighborhood like Westwood or Northside.

Lessons From the Field: The Master Lease That Repositioned a Property Before Closing

Reed had originally sold this same 24-unit property to Brandon Turner years earlier, acting as Turner's buyer's agent after a cold email pitch built from a BiggerPockets analysis report. By 2019, Turner had cycled through three property managers while building Open Door Capital and relocating out of state, and reached out publicly on the BiggerPockets podcast looking for a buyer.

The outcome was a property substantially repositioned before Reed ever owned it. By the time closing arrived three months later, only a handful of units remained vacant, market testing had already shown $650 rents were achievable against an assumed $575 ceiling, and Reed's team benefited from the single period in the property's ownership history with the lowest possible expenses, no debt service, insurance, or property tax, layered against improving revenue.

A distressed occupancy rate does not have to be solved before a deal structure is agreed to. The master lease let both sides address the property's core problem, chronic underperformance from a series of disengaged managers, without either party bearing the cost alone.
Increasing the purchase price to cover a seller's carrying costs can still net a better deal than a lower price with no head start. Reed's team gained three months of unencumbered cash flow and stabilization work in exchange for a purchase price increase equal to those carrying costs.
The seller benefits from this structure even if the buyer walks away. Since Turner's mortgage payments were happening regardless of the sale's outcome, the property arrived at closing in better condition and with better tenants than if the deal had fallen through, protecting his position either way.
The lowest-revenue period of a turnaround is also, structurally, the lowest-expense period, if the deal is built that way. Taking over management before assuming any debt service meant every dollar collected in that first month could go toward stabilization work rather than covering a mortgage payment.
A responsive relationship built years earlier can resurface unexpectedly. Reed's original cold outreach to Turner, unrelated at the time to any intent to eventually buy the property back, put him in position as the only person who responded when Turner later asked publicly for a buyer.

Reading, Ohio: Cincinnati's Unlikely Development Hotspot

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 02:12:03 GMT

Reading, Ohio: Cincinnati's Unlikely Development Hotspot

Commercial rents on Benson Street in Reading, Ohio , a four-block corridor known as the largest bridal district in the world per capita, now rival what landlords command on Main Street downtown or at The Banks, Cincinnati's most prime real estate. Joe Cornwell, founder of Realty One Stop and a vertically integrated developer with over 140 units under management, is in the middle of converting a 1905 theater there into a 75,000-square-foot mixed-use building with 44 apartments, a project that illustrates just how much value sits in Cincinnati's under-the-radar corridors once someone is willing to do the ground-up work.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Joe Cornwell , founder of Realty One Stop and ROS Construction, a vertically integrated Cincinnati developer whose portfolio includes over 140 multifamily and mixed-use units, with assets under management projected to reach $20 million to $25 million once his current Reading development stabilizes. Cornwell's construction background and hands-on role in Reading's redevelopment give him unusually specific, ground-level detail on a niche corridor most Cincinnati investors have never analyzed.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Cornwell's advice on which older Cincinnati housing stock is worth a bathroom addition versus a full second-story pop-top, and more detail on Reading's new tax abatement program.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

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The Bridal District: Why Four Blocks Command Downtown Rents

Reading's Bridal District runs along Benson Street for about four blocks west of Reading Road, bordering the neighboring community of Lockland. It holds more unique bridal retailers and designer lines than anywhere else in the world, drawing clients from New York, Texas, California, Florida, Canada, and internationally. That retail draw translates directly into commercial rent, priced comparably to downtown Cincinnati's core business district, but the premium drops off sharply outside the immediate corridor. Rents fall dramatically just one block north or south of Benson Street, since foot traffic concentrates almost entirely on that single streetscape.

Why Infill Development Inside 275 Is So Rare in Cincinnati

Ground-up development inside the I-275 loop faces a structural barrier that outer suburbs do not: there is almost no available land. Roughly 99% of the core Hamilton County and western Clermont County footprint is already built out, which pushes most new residential construction toward the region's outer edges, where land is cheap and jurisdictions actively incentivize farmland development.

Building inside the loop typically means either tearing down existing structures or, as Cornwell's project does, a hybrid approach that preserves part of an existing building while adding new construction around it. His team kept the original 1905 theater's exterior brick walls and roofline while completely gutting the interior down to the dirt, then assembled three additional parcels, a house, an empty lot, and an alleyway, to create roughly 100 parking spaces alongside the development.

This scarcity is exactly why Reading's local government stands out. The city is actively incentivizing developers and investors through code enforcement on neglected properties and a newly passed Community Reinvestment Area tax abatement covering the entire valley, a level of municipal cooperation Cornwell says is rare for a small Hamilton County municipality. For an investor evaluating Greater Cincinnati infill opportunities, that kind of local government alignment can matter as much as the underlying real estate fundamentals.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Cornwell's underwriting on the Reading development surfaced a clear unit-mix pattern that applies broadly to multifamily development in Cincinnati real estate .

Two-bedroom, two-bathroom units produce the best rent per square foot. Cornwell's underwriting lands at roughly $1.75 per square foot, projecting about $1,750 a month on a 1,000-square-foot two-two. Larger three-bedroom units and smaller one-bedroom units both see rent per square foot decline, since adding a bedroom or bathroom to an already self-contained apartment costs relatively little compared to the fixed cost of kitchen, appliances, and HVAC already built into the unit.
The second full bathroom is what young professional tenants are actually paying for. Cornwell's target tenant, single or partnered, often hybrid-working, wants a private en-suite bathroom off the primary bedroom plus a separate bathroom for guests or a roommate, a distinction that matters more to this tenant class than raw square footage.
Older Cincinnati housing stock rewards different renovation strategies depending on era and neighborhood. Cape Cod-style homes, common across Deer Park, Norwood, Reading , and similar central-to-east side suburbs built in the 1940s through 1960s, typically have a plumbing stack already running near the upstairs landing closet, making a second bathroom addition there relatively cheap. Turn-of-the-century American Foursquare homes in neighborhoods like Oakley, Hyde Park, Price Hill, Westwood, Evanston, Avondale , and North Avondale were built without a shared guest bathroom at all, since the era's norm was that guests never used a resident's private bathroom. Adding a half bath off the living area or kitchen in these homes, often by reclaiming space from an underused formal dining room, is now one of the highest-return renovation moves available in that housing stock.
A two-to-three-times return threshold governs whether a renovation makes sense. Cornwell's rule of thumb: if a $100,000 renovation on a $100,000 purchase does not add at least $100,000 in equity, and ideally closer to $200,000, it is not worth doing.

What is not working: assuming ground-up development delivers fast returns. Cornwell is direct that development is neither easy nor quick money, and that a comparable amount of capital and time could produce faster, more certain returns through value-add acquisitions instead.

Lessons From the Field: What a Floodplain Discovery Did to a 44-Unit Development

knew about going in. What they did not fully anticipate was how complex FEMA-compliant building code would turn out to be once engineering work began on the roughly 11,000-square-foot ground floor footprint of the old theater building.

The complication was structural: any space below the required flood elevation could not be used as occupied residential or commercial space at all. That ruled out the ground floor's originally planned mix of retail, office, and residential use entirely, since the entire footprint sat below the mandated elevation.

A known floodplain designation does not mean you understand its full building code implications. The general flood risk was known upfront. The specific FEMA compliance requirements only surfaced once detailed engineering began.
A forced design change can improve the deal instead of derailing it. Losing ground-floor residential and commercial space led directly to an additional apartment floor, growing the unit count from 38 to 44.
Vertical integration turns an underwriting problem into a business opportunity. Rather than treating the oversized shop space as wasted square footage, the team is treating it as inventory to actively monetize through their own construction company.
Development-stage uncertainty can run far longer than most investors expect. Twelve months passed between going under contract and having certainty the deal would actually close, a timeline Cornwell says makes ground-up development unsuitable for anyone seeking fast or passive returns.
Outside feedback questioning a deal's difficulty is worth hearing, but does not have to change the decision. Experienced mentors who underwrote the deal told Cornwell the numbers worked, but questioned why he would choose a harder path than easier, faster real estate strategies available at similar scale. Cornwell and his partner proceeded anyway, treating the project's difficulty as part of its appeal rather than a reason to avoid it.

Cincinnati Zoning Variance: Turning a Fourplex Into Six Units

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 03:01:35 GMT

Two years, roughly $10,000 in zoning costs, and about 40 neighbor signatures. What Jeremy Komer's Northside conversion reveals about Cincinnati's variance process and the gap in Connected Communities.

Jeremy Komer spent close to $10,000 and two full years navigating Cincinnati's zoning process to convert a neglected fourplex on Chase Avenue in Northside into six rentable units, a project that added 30% to 40% to the property's value. His deal is a working case study in how Cincinnati's single-family zoning collides with its own missing-middle housing goals, and what it actually costs in time and money to push a property through that process.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Jeremy Komer , a Northside-based real estate investor who has been active in Cincinnati since 2020, financing deals through everything from FHA house-hacking loans to hard money and commercial construction loans. Komer's direct-to-seller sourcing and his firsthand experience navigating Cincinnati's zoning variance process give this episode unusually specific, step-by-step detail that most investors never see documented.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Komer's earlier experience managing a distressed Over-the-Rhine property under third-party management, and more detail on how he split the original parcel before closing.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

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Northside's Zoning Mismatch: Single-Family Rules on Multifamily Buildings

Northside was largely built as tenement housing in the population boom that followed the Civil War, with most buildings originally holding one unit per floor. As plumbing arrived, those buildings consolidated down to a single shared kitchen and bathroom per structure, eventually functioning as single-family homes even though the physical buildings were built for multiple households. The neighborhood's zoning, designated SF-2 with a 2,000-square-foot minimum lot size, was written more than a century after much of that housing stock existed, meaning most Northside parcels are zoned for a use they were never physically built to match. Records for many of these buildings only go back to 1890, since a labor riot that year destroyed the city's earlier property records.

Cincinnati's Missing Middle Housing Push, and What It Actually Covers

The city's Connected Communities legislation is the policy backdrop for deals like this one. It reduces parking requirements and density restrictions near transit and business districts, and it allows one-to-four-unit conversions by right in single-family zones like SF-2, something that previously required the same variance process Komer went through. The stated goal is restoring what planners call missing middle housing, the multifamily housing stock that neighborhoods like Northside lost as buildings were down-converted to single-family use over the decades.

The gap in that policy is exactly where Komer's project fell. Connected Communities covers going from one unit up to four. Komer needed to go from four units to six, which still requires the full variance and plans examiner process rather than a by-right approval, even though the project fits the spirit of the same missing-middle policy.

This sits inside a broader Cincinnati real estate rent pattern worth tracking for any investor considering a similar unit-count increase: since the market shift that began in August 2024, C-class one-bedroom apartments have seen the sharpest and most persistent rent softening of any segment, with two-bedroom C-class rents holding roughly flat. A location with strong walkability and character, like Komer's Chase Avenue building, is one of the few conditions that can still command premium rent on a one-bedroom unit despite that broader softness.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Komer's approach breaks down into a few distinct, repeatable moves.

Build the seller relationship over time, not urgency. Komer met the seller by chance on the street and kept following up every month or two for roughly a year before the seller was ready to sell. No pressure, just consistent, low-friction contact.
Structure the deal around what each side actually values. The seller believed the single-family portion of the property was worth more than Komer did, and Komer wanted the fourplex the seller undervalued. Splitting the parcel let each side keep the piece they valued more, with Komer taking on all the risk and cost of getting the split approved and no obligation to close until the split was confirmed.
Use a construction loan that rolls into permanent commercial financing. Komer financed the acquisition with a standard 25% down loan, then used a Community Trust Bank product that combined the renovation loan with the commercial property loan in a single closing, avoiding a second full closing cost, which he estimated would have added roughly $10,000 to the deal.
Keep existing units generating revenue during a long entitlement process. With three of the building's units still rentable throughout the two-year zoning and permitting timeline, Komer covered his holding costs while waiting on approvals rather than carrying a vacant building.
Bring community support to the zoning fight. When the zoning committee rejected the variance application, as expected, Komer went door-to-door and collected about 40 signatures from neighbors supporting the additional housing. That petition, presented at the plans examiner hearing, became the deciding factor in getting the variance approved.

What is not working, or at least consistently underestimated: assuming Cincinnati's zoning timeline moves quickly. Komer expected the zoning process to take one or two months. It took six to seven months to move through the zoning committee rejection, the variance application, and the plans examiner hearing, on top of a separate multi-month permitting process once the zoning was approved.

Lessons From the Field: What It Actually Takes to Go From Four Units to Six

Komer's plan going into the deal was simple: buy the neglected fourplex, keep it as-is, and improve the rent roll. That changed a few months before closing, when he realized the building's mechanical access on the first floor made it feasible to convert a single two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit into three separate one-bedroom apartments.

The outcome was a $130,000 to $140,000 interior renovation and a separate six-to-eight-month exterior renovation, including a DOT permit and $750 bond to close the sidewalk and street during masonry work, all layered on top of roughly $10,000 in zoning-specific costs. The result was a 30% to 40% increase in property value, driven by the shift from limited fourplex comps to a cap-rate valuation on six units, with the interior renovation financed through the same construction loan and later refinanced through Community Trust Bank.

Expect the first zoning application to be rejected as a matter of course. A rejection at the initial zoning relief stage is close to automatic, not a signal the project is flawed.
Community support can outweigh a zoning committee's opposition at the plans examiner stage. Forty signatures gathered door-to-door became the single biggest factor in Komer's approval.
Structure acquisition terms around due diligence risk, not just price. Making closing contingent on zoning approval let Komer pursue an upside project without being stuck owning it on the seller's terms if the split or variance failed.
Commercial code applies once a building crosses four units, with real cost implications. Requirements like architect-stamped drawings, additional fire blocking, and mandatory outlets near HVAC units do not apply to smaller residential permits, and missing them causes inspection failures.
A revenue-generating property can absorb a long entitlement timeline. Keeping three units occupied throughout the two-year process kept Komer roughly break-even on holding costs while he waited on approvals that were entirely outside his control.

Why Cincinnati's Biggest Multifamily Deals Don't Pencil for Everyone

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:14:42 GMT

Lee Yoder holds 930 units, and almost none of them are near Cincinnati. Why institutional capital compresses returns above 100 units, and what he found in rural Ohio and Indiana instead.

Lee Yoder owns 930 units today, and only one property sits anywhere near Cincinnati proper. The rest run north through the northwest corner of Ohio and into the northeast corner of Indiana, in towns most Cincinnati investors have never heard of. Founder of Threefold REI, Yoder made that shift deliberately, not because he stopped liking Cincinnati real estate , but because the returns he needed stopped being available once his deal size crossed into institutional territory.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Lee Yoder , founder of Threefold REI, who has taken three multifamily syndications full cycle and currently holds 930 units concentrated in northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana. Yoder's experience straddling both a small Cincinnati-area portfolio and a much larger rural multifamily operation gives him an unusually direct comparison point on where returns are actually available at different deal sizes.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Yoder's decision to bring property management in-house after years working with a third-party Cincinnati management company, and more detail on his rent roll and leasing performance in Williamsburg.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

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Why Yoder Left Cincinnati for Rural Ohio and Indiana

Williamsburg, Ohio , in Clermont County, is Yoder's property closest to Cincinnati, roughly 15 minutes from the outer belt on Route 32 past Batavia. The appeal is straightforward: cheaper land and rent than closer-in submarkets, a small school district, a walkable downtown with a coffee shop and donut shop, and easy access back to every Cincinnati amenity via the outer belt. Two-thirds of the unit mix is one-bedroom, one-third two-bedroom. One-bedrooms moved from $850 back up to $900 in early 2026 after a rough stretch; two-bedrooms have held steady around $1,100.
Northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana are where the bulk of Yoder's 930 units sit, in small towns like West Liberty, similar in character to Williamsburg but small enough that few investors outside a tight radius have heard of them. Yoder targets a minimum of 100 units per acquisition there specifically so the deal can support a dedicated on-the-ground team.
Cincinnati inside the outer belt , particularly for properties over 100 units, is where Yoder says he consistently loses to institutional buyers who have a lower cost of capital and target lower returns, since their investors are largely preserving existing wealth rather than building it. Yoder still finds smaller Cincinnati deals with a workable price per door but says he has lost interest in that segment now that his fund size requires bigger acquisitions.
The Cincinnati east side broadly , including the Eastgate area near Williamsburg, has seen heavy new apartment construction in the last several years. Yoder says that supply has occasionally pulled his own C-class tenants toward newer B-class product offerings with months of free rent as concessions, a pattern he expects to ease as those new deliveries slow into 2026 and 2027.

The Cap Rate Gap Between Cincinnati and Rural Multifamily

What's Working in Cincinnati (and Just Outside It)

Yoder's strategy comes down to a small number of deliberate choices about where to compete and how to hold.

Go where the big players aren't. Yoder specifically targets deal sizes and locations that fall below the threshold institutional capital requires, whether that means staying under 100 units in Cincinnati or going rural at scale further out.
Buy for cash flow, not a five-year flip. Yoder's earlier syndications targeted a shorter hold and exited faster than projected. His current portfolio is built around a 10-year hold horizon, planning to refinance around year five and return investor capital while continuing to collect cash flow rather than counting on a large sale-driven upside.
Bring property management in-house once you have the scale and expertise to do it. Yoder worked with a Cincinnati-based third-party management company for years, learned the business from them, and eventually built an internal team once he understood the operation well enough to run it with tighter focus and lower cost, since the internal team's only incentive is making the properties profitable, not generating a separate management fee.
Match capital investment to what the tenant base can actually pay. For C-class properties right now, Yoder deliberately avoids upgrading finishes like countertops or cabinets that are functional but dated, since C-class renters currently want affordability over upgrades they cannot pay for. Yoder's approach is to accept a lower rent, like $850 instead of $950, rather than force a renovation cost onto a tenant base that will not absorb it.

What is not working: assuming Cincinnati's headline market-wide rent growth numbers apply evenly across asset classes and unit types. Much of the reported growth is concentrated in single-family rentals and Class-A apartments, while Class-C one-bedrooms specifically have lagged or declined.

Lessons From the Field: What a Rent Leasing Platform Change Revealed About the Market

A leasing technology change can surface a market shift before broader data confirms it. TLP recognized the March shift within about three weeks specifically because they had already been tracking their own inquiry-to-lease funnel closely since 2023.
More inquiries do not guarantee more leases, at least not immediately. The gap between the January inquiry spike and the March conversion spike shows real demand and converted demand can move on different timelines.
AI leasing tools require real setup investment before they perform. Both operators described a genuine break-in period training the AI on quirks and edge cases before it delivered clean results.
Independent portfolios seeing the same shift at the same time is a stronger signal than either alone. TLP's Cincinnati experience and Yoder's rural Ohio and Indiana experience lined up almost to the week, despite having no shared management or geography.
Class-C recovery lags Class-A recovery, and the timing gap itself is data. Rents for older one-bedroom stock only began recovering roughly 18 months after the August 2024 downturn began, well after Class-A rents had already stabilized and climbed.

Hunter, Hammer, Brain, Money: A Framework for Real Estate Partnerships

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:12:56 GMT

How Ian Cruz and Slocomb Reed used four defined roles to scale from an 8-unit Northside deal to 73 units in under two years — plus what Cincinnati's rental data shows right now.

Greater Cincinnati had 1,264 active rental listings against 1,730 active for-sale listings as of late February 2026, according to a proprietary web scrape TLP Investment Services had just launched. Ian Cruz and Slocomb Reed, co-founders of TLP Investment Services, shared that data alongside a breakdown of how their own partnership scaled from an 8-unit value-add deal to a 73-unit portfolio in under two years, at a live session of Cincinnati's Best Ever REI Mastermind.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a live presentation by Ian Cruz and Slocomb Reed , co-founders of TLP Investment Services, at Cincinnati's Best Ever REI Mastermind, a monthly meetup held at the Deer Park Community Center. Their combined finance and operations background, and the deals they walked through in real time, give this session an unusually direct look at how multifamily partnerships and financing actually come together.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers audience Q&A on partnership decision-making when partners reach an impasse, and more detail on how TLP structures general partner compensation.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

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Where TLP Is Scaling Value-Add Multifamily in Greater Cincinnati

Northside is where TLP's partnership began, with an 8-unit deal in 2024: two four-family buildings sitting side by side, separately parceled, but listed by a commercial broker as a single 8-unit commercial property. The value play was recognizing that the combined residential valuation of the two buildings individually was meaningfully lower than what the commercial listing price implied. TLP exited that deal after about 18 months.
Northside and College Hill together make up TLP's 2025 portfolio, a 73-unit deal spanning six apartment buildings, five of them on the same Northside street and the sixth in College Hill. The properties are 1960s and 1970s C-class assets, occupancy has run below target due to some tenant turnover, but revenue is at the highest point since acquisition due to executed business plan improvements.
TLP is now under contract on a scatter-site portfolio of over 100 units , with plans to acquire a deal of similar size or larger every year going forward, using the acquisition and asset management capacity built across the first two deals.

What Cincinnati's Rental and For-Sale Data Actually Shows Right Now

TLP's web scrape, tracking specific Greater Cincinnati zip codes, surfaced several data points as of late February 2026.

Average days on market ran 57.8 for rental listings overall, with apartments at 59.2 and single-family rentals at 54, a smaller gap between the two than expected. For-sale listings averaged 85.8 days on market, roughly four weeks longer than rentals.
Price reductions hit over 300 of 1,734 active for-sale listings in just the four days before the meetup.
Rent figures across all rental listings averaged $1,718 a month with a median of $1,495. Apartments alone averaged $1,516 with a median of $1,300. Single-family rentals averaged $2,279 with a median of $2,095.
August 2024 marked a clear inflection point. Rents could be asked at nearly any level through that July, then by September the market flipped hard toward tenants, with price reductions and longer vacancies becoming standard.
A K-shaped split has held since that fall 2024 to winter 2025 transition. Premium locations and premium properties, class A assets, continue seeing rent increases and falling days on market. Older 1960s and 1970s one- and two-bedroom stock has stayed flat to declining over the same period.
Net move-ins at TLP's own portfolio ran nine more move-ins than move-outs over the trailing 12 months, one internal metric the team tracks alongside the market-wide data.

The structural point underneath all of it: Cincinnati real estate still has starter-home neighborhoods where purchase prices sit in the high $100,000s to low-to-mid $200,000s, a price range where owning still beats renting on a monthly cost basis, something increasingly rare in other major metros.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Partnership structure. TLP frames every partnership around four roles, useful for any investor considering bringing on a partner.

The Hunter finds the deal. This person is wired to enjoy sourcing opportunities and stays plugged into brokers and off-market channels.
The Hammer executes the business plan. This covers leasing, maintenance, and keeping CapEx under control once the deal closes.
The Brain underwrites the deal. This role lives in the spreadsheets, structures the debt and equity, and builds the model the rest of the team executes against.
The Money raises capital from investors and brings a base of relationships willing to fund the deal.

No single person fills all four roles well, and TLP's partnership works because Ian and Slocomb overlap enough to cover for each other while still each carrying primary ownership of distinct roles.

Lessons From the Field: Financing a $3 Million Bridge Loan in Five Days

A financing gap in the final days of closing is a real scenario, not a hypothetical. Property condition assessments on agency debt can surface repair demands late enough to threaten the entire closing timeline.
A pre-built network of hard money contacts is the difference between losing a deal and closing it. TLP fielded three offers inside five days because those relationships already existed.
No origination fee can matter more than a lower rate on genuinely short-term debt. The math changes when a loan is only outstanding for a few months rather than years.
Absorbing unexpected cost into the acquisition fee, rather than passing it to investors, is a deliberate choice about who a partnership protects first. TLP treated protecting investor returns as non-negotiable even when it meant a smaller payout for the general partners.
A defined exit strategy on a partnership matters as much as the deal itself. Every property in TLP's portfolio has a set sale deadline, which the team credits with keeping decision-making focused even when individual deals get stressful.

Cincinnati Wholesaling in 2026: Why Buyers Are All Flippers Now

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:42:52 GMT

Hedge funds are gone, rates broke the buy-and-hold math, and Cincinnati's off-market deal flow now turns block by block. Where the deals are and what buyers inherit when they sign.

Dylan Koch has closed roughly 300 off-market transactions since starting Morning Brew Properties in late 2021, and the buyer pool on the other side of those deals has changed completely. He used to sell heavily to hedge funds and small multifamily buy-and-hold buyers. Now, over the past 12 to 18 months, he is selling almost exclusively to flippers, a shift driven by interest rates that make buy-and-hold math harder to pencil across much of Greater Cincinnati .

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Dylan Koch , founder of Morning Brew Properties, a direct-to-seller marketing and wholesaling company operating across Hamilton, Butler, Warren, and Clermont counties. Koch's data set spans roughly 300 off-market transactions and a 50-unit rental portfolio built entirely from his own deal sourcing, giving him an unusually current read on where deal flow is concentrated and how the buyer pool has shifted.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Koch's transition from working as a pharmacist into full-time real estate investing, and a full breakdown of what wholesalers look for in a serious buyer.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

Subscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Where Cincinnati's Off-Market Deals Are Flowing in 2026

Hamilton, Ohio , in Butler County, has been the biggest surprise in Koch's five years of buying, largely concentrated in zip codes 45011, 45013, and 45015 on the west side of the river. Demand there is tied directly to the Spooky Nook Sportsplex and a wave of private development downtown.
Cheviot, Westwood, and Delhi , on Cincinnati's west side, are Koch's strongest rental markets, driven by a favorable price-to-income ratio. Properties zoned for Oak Hill schools sell especially well.
Deer Park, Pleasant Ridge, Evanston, and Avondale , on the east side, round out Koch's rental targeting. Avondale tends to carry a lower price point relative to its rental income potential.
Madisonville was a major focus for Koch in 2022, but by 2026 it has become difficult to comp. Similar homes matching on beds, baths, square footage, and proximity to MedPace and the Ackerman Group's new development can differ in value by hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the specific block.
Norwood carries the same block-by-block unpredictability. Koch describes it as having distinct sub-markets within the same zip code, where comps a few streets apart do not translate.
Evanston, Avondale, and North Avondale together require close, block-level attention. Some blocks show serious upside potential, and adjacent blocks carry real red flags.
Reading behaves similarly to Norwood, split between its walkable Vital District and the surrounding hill-and-valley terrain, with sharp value lines between them.
St. Bernard holds Koch's largest personal rental portfolio. Comps there can run from $350,000 to $400,000 on one block and drop to $175,000 to $200,000 just a couple of blocks away. The small downtown has been building real walkability over roughly 15 years, evidenced by a new Dairy Queen that reportedly draws a line of 25 people.
Hyde Park and Oakley produce fewer deals for Koch. Higher price points mean sellers with real equity are less willing to take the discount a flipper's numbers require.

Koch's marketing footprint mirrors this pattern geographically: all of Hamilton County, the southern and northwest portions of Butler County up to about Franklin, the west side of Clermont County out to roughly Bethel, and limited activity in Warren County near Mason and Loveland.

Why Cincinnati Wholesale Deals Are Shifting from Rentals to Flips

What's Working in Cincinnati

Koch's operation runs on a few specific mechanics that separate a professional wholesale operation from an amateur one in 2026.

Target the sub-$250,000 to $350,000 ARV range. Koch intentionally avoids higher price points, where buyers expect $60-per-square-foot quartz finishes rather than the $40-per-square-foot white shaker cabinets and granite that work in his target range, and where sellers with real equity are harder to move off asking price.
Back into the offer rather than using a flat percentage rule. Instead of the common 70% to 75% of ARV minus repairs formula, Koch calculates backward from realtor commission, holding costs, and loan costs, then requires a larger spread as the price point rises to compensate for the added time, energy, and risk.
Screen buyers on cash position, experience, and speed. Cash beats hard money, hard money beats conventional financing, and a buyer's ability to close in 30 days or less matters as much as their offer price. Koch increasingly relies on a repeat list of 15 to 20 known buyers rather than mass marketing every deal.
Budget for real overhead. Koch runs $10,000 to $15,000 a month in ad spend, $120,000 to $180,000 a year, and advises anyone entering wholesaling to expect a minimum three-month runway and to be prepared to spend $10,000 to $15,000 before seeing a return.
Comply with Ohio's new wholesale disclosure rule. Ohio SB 155 now requires wholesalers to disclose, before the purchase agreement is signed, if the property will be mass marketed, with penalties reaching three times the assignment fee plus attorney fees for noncompliance.

What is not working: relying on an assignment agreement alone to understand a wholesale deal, and mass-marketing every property to a broad buyer list instead of building relationships with buyers who have already closed and performed.

Lessons From the Field: What You Inherit When You Sign a Wholesale Assignment

That inherited inspection contingency meant Ian could have terminated the contract unilaterally, without even involving the wholesaler, simply by delivering written notice to the seller. He had no intention of exploiting that position to kill the deal, but the discovery underscored a real gap in how assignment agreements work: they are built only to substitute the buyer's name onto the original contract, not to summarize or guarantee the terms underneath it.

Always request the original purchase and sale agreement before signing an assignment. The assignment agreement itself is not designed to disclose earnest money exposure or contingency terms.
Earnest money risk transfers to the assignee. If the deal falls apart after assignment, the new buyer, not the wholesaler, is typically the one who forfeits the deposit.
Inherited contingencies are real leverage. A generous inspection period negotiated by the wholesaler becomes the buyer's leverage once the assignment closes.
A blacked-out purchase price is a signal to verify, not skip. Confirming the underlying price against the total the buyer is paying is a basic check before proceeding.
New disclosure law changes the paper trail on every wholesale deal. Both wholesalers and buyers now have a documented reason to request and retain the underlying disclosure and purchase agreement.

Short-Term Rentals in Cincinnati: Where They Still Work in 2026

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:31:05 GMT

A neighborhood-by-neighborhood map of where short-term rentals are legal in Greater Cincinnati; and what the flattening market means for the ones that are.

In Symmes Township , three short-term rental owners had to fight all the way to the Ohio First District Court of Appeals just to keep operating, after the township first tried to reclassify their properties as a bed and breakfast, then as a hotel, to shut them down. Yiwei Cheng, founder of Pink Cash Cow Property Management , has managed around 30 furnished rental properties across Greater Cincinnati since 2019, and her portfolio has lived through nearly every version of that regulatory fight, along with the shift in what actually books in 2026.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Yiwei Cheng , founder of Pink Cash Cow Property Management, who has managed around 30 short-term and midterm rental properties across Greater Cincinnati since 2019 and set up more than 40 over the years. Her combination of ownership, arbitrage, and third-party management experience gives her visibility into performance data and regulatory outcomes across neighborhoods that a single-property owner would not have.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Cheng's early mistakes pricing her first Airbnb and a full breakdown of Cincinnati's biggest annual events by booking demand.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

Subscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Where Short-Term Rentals Are Still Legal and Working in Greater Cincinnati

The City of Cincinnati is the safest legal ground in the region. Short-term rentals are written directly into city law, so an owner who registers and pays the required taxes is protected regardless of neighborhood. Downtown and OTR condos slowed hard during COVID but have since become part of a broader mix rather than the whole strategy.
Mount Auburn is where Cheng bought her own first home, drawn by a tax abatement and proximity to downtown. It sits near Oakley and Hyde Park without carrying the single-bathroom housing stock that made those two neighborhoods a harder fit for her.
Oakley and Hyde Park carry a lot of older housing with only one bathroom, which Cheng now actively avoids when sourcing STR properties, regardless of neighborhood desirability.
Norwood illustrates just how much the numbers have moved. In 2018 and 2019, an $80,000 house there rented for around $500 a month, barely cash flowing on a 30-year mortgage. As a furnished rental today, a one-bedroom in Norwood was getting $1,700 a month on midterm stays and is now booking closer to $1,500, still well above what it would produce as a standard long-term rental.
Loveland allows short-term rentals outright and has a real cluster of them near the Loveland bike trail.
Symmes Township , next door to Loveland, does not allow new short-term rentals. A neighbor's complaint led the township to try reclassifying an existing property as a bed and breakfast, then a hotel, before passing a new ordinance within two months that created a permit pathway while publicly stating it would deny every permit filed under it.
West Chester Township and Liberty Township each had hundreds of short-term rentals operating before both put moratoriums in place within the last year, banning any new ones going forward.
Blue Ash, Terrace Park, and Mariemont ban short-term rentals outright.
Covington, Kentucky allows short-term rentals, but requires three separate licenses (occupational, rental, and a short-term rental application), inspections, and a minimum distance between properties, making it a heavier lift to set up than most Ohio-side markets.
Newport, Kentucky technically allows short-term rentals in one zoning district, but that district has so little residential housing stock that it is not a realistic option for most investors.
Bellevue, Kentucky allows short-term rentals only if the property is the owner's primary residence, with a cap on the number of rental days per year.
The City of Hamilton allows short-term rentals with a license, though Cheng notes guest quality there has been inconsistent. Midterm rentals are performing well in Hamilton, driven by people displaced by fire or flood and by construction workers, and Cheng is watching a proposed data center project there that, if approved, could significantly increase midterm demand from construction crews. The townships surrounding the city of Hamilton do not allow overnight stays at all, which is part of why Spooky Nook-driven demand pushes toward the city proper.
Mason allows short-term rentals with a permit, though Cheng's own property sits in the unincorporated township next to Mason, which currently has no regulation against it. That property has run successfully since 2021, benefiting from relocation demand and the annual Cincinnati Open tennis tournament, historically the single biggest short-term rental month in the entire region, not just Mason.

The Cincinnati Short-Term Rental Market Has Plateaued: What the Data Shows

What's Working in Cincinnati

Cheng's screening criteria for a furnished rental property in Greater Cincinnati comes down to three property traits.

A minimum of two full bathrooms. Cheng is direct that a single-bathroom property, common in older Oakley and Hyde Park housing stock, does not perform in 2026 even when priced competitively.
A workable bedroom-to-bathroom ratio. A five-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath layout, the kind created by finishing an attic into extra bedrooms without adding plumbing, sounds like more inventory but functions poorly once ten guests are sharing one full bathroom.
No walk-through bedrooms. Any layout where a guest has to pass through one bedroom to reach another kills the privacy that furnished rental guests expect, regardless of how the listing counts total bedrooms.

Amenities matter in a specific order, based on what Cheng has seen drive bookings.

Parking , ranked as the single most important amenity. Garage parking beats driveway parking, which beats street parking, and this matters most downtown, where some zoning does not even allow street parking for guests.
A pool , which Cheng says reliably justifies its added expense through higher revenue.
A hot tub , which increases revenue but comes with enough ongoing maintenance, draining, cleaning, and pH balancing between every guest, that Cheng has chosen not to offer one herself.
Family-friendly amenities , like a crib or high chair, which Cheng sources cheaply through Facebook Marketplace and includes automatically in larger homes to capture family travel demand.

The seasonal playbook Cheng runs is to raise nightly rates as high as the market allows during peak season, then shift the same property toward 30-plus day midterm stays in the off-season to protect occupancy without racing rates to the bottom. She holds a firm rate floor rather than chasing every winter booking, because she has found that guests who push hardest for discounts upfront are also the guests most likely to leave problem reviews or attempt chargebacks.

What is not working: buying based on the assumption that any location or layout will succeed as a short-term rental. Cheng is specific that success now requires matching property type to location and to the realistic current rate environment, not the 2021-to-2023 pricing many owners are still anchored to.

Lessons From the Field: Fighting a Township Over the Right to Operate a Short-Term Rental

Cheng and her co-plaintiffs took the case one level higher, to the First District Court of Appeals overseeing Hamilton County, and won. The outcome protects the three specific properties involved in the lawsuit, but it does not open the door for any new short-term rental to start operating in Symmes Township going forward.

A single neighbor complaint can trigger a multi-year legal fight. The entire case originated from one retired resident objecting to who was coming and going next door.
Municipalities can shift legal theories mid-fight. Symmes Township moved from a bed and breakfast classification to a hotel classification once the first did not hold up.
Winning grandfathered status does not create new opportunity. The court victory protected existing operators only. It did not make Symmes Township viable for new short-term rental purchases.
A fast-moving ordinance change is a warning sign, not a resolution. The two-month ordinance passage that promised to deny every permit was a tactic, not a genuine compliance pathway.
Joining forces with other affected owners strengthens a legal case. Cheng's lawsuit succeeded as a group of three owners rather than a single property fighting alone.

Fairfax, Madisonville, and Newport: Cincinnati Real Estate in 2026

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 05:07:31 GMT

Where Cincinnati Investors Are Still Finding Margin

In Fairfax , empty lots that once sat overlooked are now selling for $120,000 to $150,000, driven almost entirely by proximity to the Mariemont school district. Jerry Garrison, a Keller Williams agent and single-family investor who has worked Greater Cincinnati real estate for two decades, has watched that price shift play out street by street, first in Fairfax, then in Madisonville, and now across the river in Newport, Kentucky.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Jerry Garrison , a Keller Williams real estate agent and long-time Greater Cincinnati investor with two decades of experience across multifamily and single-family properties. His vantage point as both a working agent and an active landlord in Madisonville and Newport makes his neighborhood-level read unusually current.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Garrison's take on Evanston, East Walnut Hills, and the Cincinnati west side, along with his advice for someone making their first real estate investment in 2026.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

Subscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Where Cincinnati Investors Are Finding Margin in 2026

Fairfax sits just west of Mariemont, close enough to the same school district to carry its price effect. Lots that trade around $120,000 are now targets for builders running a townhouse format: three bedroom, two and a half bath, with a finished lower level and a garage offset from the front entry where the lot allows it. The style fits parcels platted in 1884 or 1904, long and narrow, with living space stacked over three or four floors instead of spread across a yard.
Madisonville is where Garrison bought his first rental in 2017, a house on Britton Street for $105,000. He listed it for $1,200 a month and had 20 people show up to see it. Rent on that property and others like it now runs $2,000 and higher, and Garrison estimates some of his Madisonville homes have appreciated 60% since purchase. Madison Road itself has been reshaped by developers replacing single-story retail, the kind that once housed an auto body shop and an ice cream parlor, with three and four story mixed-use buildings: retail on the ground floor, class A apartments above.
Madison Place , bordering Mariemont on the other side from Fairfax, sat at $80,000 to $120,000 for years while comparable Mariemont homes traded near $350,000, despite both being the same distance from downtown. That gap is now closing as buyers push into Madison Place and Madisonville looking for the value Fairfax no longer offers.
Newport, Kentucky has become Garrison's cross-river play as Ohio-side margins tighten. Property taxes there run lower than Hamilton County even though owners pay both city and county tax. The tradeoff is a stricter inspection process and a contractor pool that mostly is not licensed in Kentucky, which drove up Garrison's early rehab costs while he built out a new set of trade relationships.
Covington , just past Newport, is earning a look for the same reason: lower cost of ownership and, in Garrison's words, a neighborhood with good vibe worth familiarizing himself with.
Old Milford , where Garrison lives, is a small walkable pocket distinct from the broader Milford footprint. It carries turn-of-the-century two-story retail buildings with a single apartment over each storefront, recently anchored by Little Miami Brewing. The wider Milford area, by contrast, is mostly 1950s ranch stock inside 275 and 1990s-to-current subdivisions and class B multifamily further out.

The Mariemont School District Effect

What's Working in Cincinnati

Garrison's approach comes down to a small number of repeatable principles.

Know your margin before anything else. Garrison defines this simply: what is left after your expenses and your mortgage are paid. Every acquisition decision runs through that number first.
Concentrate in one area before you scale. Early on, especially before hiring a property manager, working scattered properties across neighborhoods wastes time and misses deal flow. Garrison picked up an off-market Fairfax flip simply because he was already renovating next door when the neighbor listed her house.
Shift to value-add and fix-and-flip as a market tightens. In Madisonville, Garrison's read for 2026 is that the play is improving a property enough to force appreciation and resell it, rather than counting on a discount at purchase, since 6% interest rates and already-elevated prices have compressed that margin.
Expand across the river when the home market compresses. Newport and Covington offer a real cost of ownership advantage, even accounting for double taxation and a more expensive first year of learning who to hire.

What is not working: buying in Madisonville expecting a discount. Garrison is blunt that the neighborhood is fully discovered now, and margins there keep getting tighter as more buyers compete for the same data everyone can see on Zillow and BiggerPockets.

Lessons From the Field: Surviving a Recession When Your Funding Partner Walks

The experience reset his risk tolerance completely. Garrison describes spending roughly five years afterward deliberately risk averse before he started slowly building his investment portfolio back, this time as a disciplined single-family buy-and-hold and flip investor rather than a leveraged multifamily operator.

A partner's personal life is part of your deal risk. Garrison's funding disappeared because of a divorce, not a market event. Structure partnerships assuming the other side's circumstances can change without warning.
Under-capitalization does not show up until conditions turn. The portfolio performed fine until 2008 exposed how thin the reserves actually were.
A forced sale is still a skill worth having. Selling around 100 units during a recession, out of necessity, built the sales ability Garrison now relies on as a full-time agent.
Reputation outlasts a credit score. Keeping commitments through the wind-down bought him grace from people who had no obligation to extend it.
Risk tolerance needs a real reset period after a crisis. Five years passed before Garrison was ready to invest again, and he treated that timeline as necessary rather than something to rush.

Flip vs. BRRR in Greater Cincinnati: A Hard Money Lender's Map

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:52:51 GMT

What 300+ Transactions Reveal About Cincinnati’s Best Investment Strategies

Grant Smith, founding partner of Sharper Capital Partners , is lending on 65 to 75 active projects at any given time across Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, roughly $15 million outstanding. Add in the 10 active flips running through his off-market buying company, Rowling Homes, and Smith is watching close to 80 deals move through the pipeline at once, giving him one of the more complete real-time pictures of where Cincinnati real estate investing strategies are actually working.

About This Post

This analysis draws from a conversation with Grant Smith , founding partner of Sharper Capital Partners and co-owner of Rowling Homes, both active across Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Smith's vantage point as a hard money lender tracking roughly 300 transactions, combined with his own flipping activity through Rowling Homes, gives him visibility into deal performance that most single-market investors do not have.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , and YouTube . The full episode also covers Smith's background moving from medical device sales into private lending, and more detail on how Rowling Homes sources and dispositions off-market deals.

The Cincy REI Show publishes every Monday. New episodes cover neighborhood-level analysis, local investor strategies, and real deal stories from operators active in Greater Cincinnati.

Subscribe on Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube

Mapping Greater Cincinnati: Where Flips Work and Where BRRR Wins

Middletown skews heavily toward the rental side. About 80% of Smith's loan volume there exits via refinance, meaning investors are running the BRRR model and holding rather than flipping.
The City of Hamilton runs closer to even, with roughly a 50-50 split between properties that refinance into rentals and properties that sell on market as flips.
The corridor between I-75 and I-71 , stretching from Avondale up through Kennedy Heights and Deer Park , is mostly flip activity in Smith's portfolio, as is most territory further east.
Kennedy Heights and Pleasant Ridge have been the most active flip markets in the last six months specifically. Smith attributes this to appreciation spillover: buyers priced out of Oakley and Pleasant Ridge are moving to Kennedy Heights next, with Deer Park and Silverton picking up overflow demand from the other direction. Madisonville , just southeast, has already been through a similar overhaul.
Cheviot and Westwood on the west side still see a decent amount of flip activity, but once you move further south into Price Hill , the market is almost entirely rentals until you reach Delhi , where flips reappear.
Springfield Township , near Winton Woods, is where Smith is currently lending on Ian's own deal. Originally underwritten to a $225,000 ARV for a BRRR exit, the property may be worth $250,000 to $275,000, which changes the math enough that leaving that equity in a refinance stops making sense compared to selling.
Hamilton's west side , particularly around the Rossville Historic District, has seen a wave of activity tied to the Spooky Nook Sportsplex development. That includes Airbnb conversions, some of which saturated the short-term rental supply, alongside straightforward flips along the Main Street and High Street corridor.
Norwood was a hot BRRR and flip market when Smith's portfolio was scaling in 2022, though activity there has cooled since.
Harrison is a narrow but real opportunity. Smith knows operators clearing $40,000 to $60,000 on individual flips there, but says he knows only a handful of buyers willing to work that market at all.
Hyde Park still sees flip and renovation activity despite ARVs running $600,000 and higher. At that price point, cost of capital becomes the deciding factor, which favors investors using private money or cash over standard hard money.
Covedale , further west, sees less lending interest specifically because property values run low enough that a stuck deal leaves little room to hedge the downside from a lender's perspective, even though Smith notes real activity still happens there outside his loan data.
East Price Hill shows a different pattern entirely: heavily Section 8, dominated by a small number of operators with large portfolios and specific expertise in that model.
Clermont County properties carry their own diligence risk. Many run on septic systems, and Smith flags this as a common blind spot for investors buying off-market or without inspections.

Why Cincinnati's Sub-$250K Housing Stock Keeps Producing Deals

The larger pattern Smith points to is a nationwide housing shortage that has been building since 2010. Building new affordable housing at scale has not kept pace, so renovating existing 80-to-100-plus-year-old housing stock has become the faster path to adding usable inventory back into the market, even with the added complexity those older homes carry.

What's Working in Cincinnati

Smith frames investor success around four competitive advantages, and in his experience, most successful operators are strong in at least one.

Deal-finding skill. Some investors simply have a sharper ability to source good deals, whatever channel they use to find them.
Construction advantage. This does not require doing the labor yourself. It means managing a reliable crew of subcontractors directly, which keeps renovation costs down.
Capital advantage. Buying with private money or cash instead of hard money, or hard money instead of conventional financing, changes what a deal can support, especially at higher price points like Hyde Park.
Management advantage. For buy-and-hold investors, operational efficiency after acquisition, from leasing to maintenance, drives the return as much as the purchase price does.

Smith is clear that area matters less than operator expertise matched to that specific area. He describes investors who dominate a single neighborhood, like Harrison or East Price Hill, simply because they know that street and that tenant base better than anyone else competing there.

Underwriting is where Smith sees the most consistent mistakes. His rule: underwrite for what you cannot see, not just what is visible during a walkthrough, and calibrate your risk tolerance to the home's actual age. A house built after 1970 carries a different risk profile than one built in 1940 or earlier. Ian's own Northside rehab illustrated this directly. Once the plaster came down, a load-bearing wall that had been rotting for over a century was fully exposed, on a house whose true build date is uncertain because a labor strike destroyed the original property records.

Zoning and code nuance is the other recurring trap. Smith and his partner have twice used Ohio Revised Code provisions to recombine adjacent parcels into a single legal duplex rather than pay to separate shared sewer and water lines under newer plumbing codes, a workaround that required real convincing with city inspectors both times.

Lessons From the Field: When a Zoning Fix Leads to Frozen Pipes

Smith and his Rowling Homes partner picked up a three-parcel property in Butler County built as a garage house and a smaller adjoining house. The two structures shared common sewer and water lines but had separate electric, and zoning allowed the property to be treated either as two separate single-family homes or as a duplex.

Code changes can override your original business plan mid-renovation. The sewer separation requirement only surfaced once plumbing work was underway, not during due diligence.
A zoning workaround is not free, even when it works. Recombining the parcels avoided a costly sewer separation, but it added its own time and approval cost.
A paused renovation carries its own risk. Leaving plumbing incomplete during a cold spell directly caused the frozen pipe failure.
Multi-parcel and shared-utility properties need extra scrutiny before close. The same Ohio Revised Code issue had already shown up once, in Middletown, and still caught the team again in Hamilton.
Treat expensive lessons as tuition, not a reason to stop. Smith's framing: investors who quit after one hard deal are walking away from the exact experience that makes the next deal profitable.