Australian company rehabilitating houses for rentals

scottw@standard-democrat.com

SIKESTON -- It may not be the too-good-to-be-true deals offered to entice victims in scams, but there is money to be made by investing in Sikeston housing, according to Australian Property Investments.

Stone was born in El Paso, Texas, but you wouldn't know it by the sound of his voice: he has lived nearly his entire life in Australia.

"So I may have adopted a little bit of their accent," he joked. And maybe a different way of thinking about real estate. Australian property values have continued to rise for over a decade with the predicted bursting bubble still a no-show there. Stone thinks property values in Sikeston are bound to go up soon.

Stone and his partner in Australia, Steve Whittan, have done the math and the leg work. He knows what homes are really worth here, what it takes to get them back up from a dilapidated state to a nice house and believes there is a legitimate investment opportunity here.

"We are predominately purchasing properties for rehabilitation and then holding them for rentals," he said. "Rather than flipping the houses, we take the long-term view and want to keep them as rentals."

Stone said they first acquired a Sikeston property as part of a package along with some houses in Kansas City, St. Louis and Pennsylvania.

"We unloaded what we didn't want," he said. "When I first came here and saw the house, it was nothing like its photograph. It was in much worse shape than we thought it was."

But Stone also saw opportunity in some vacant one-bedroom duplexes near the property.

"Our strategy is to develop clusters," Stone said. "Really what we are looking at is residential properties in depressed areas. Our strategy is provide a better quality of rental homes in those areas."

For the complete article and more local news stories, see the Thursday edition of the Standard Democrat. For the electronic edition click here to log on.