I don’t understand the rent back for 1 year thing, does lennar want to be the landlord? A managment company want’s you to be the landlord? What are the specifics.
As far as them being a good buy, if you wanted to live there and you worked in town I guess they would be. The biggest problem is the location, I’m not sure if it is in the City of Murrieta, they annexed some land but check the school district too, it may be in the Menifee district because these are way out there, that hits the value if it isn’t in Murrieta’s school district. Yahoo maps doesn’t show the streets they list in the directions yet but it’s right on the border, everything North of Los Alamos is not in Murrieta but may still have a Murrieta zip code, you lose 5-10% value for being unincorporated and another 10% if you are out of the school district. As a rental I don’t think it would pencil out, the 390k one won’t command 2k in rent (they might tell you it will but it won’t), I’m sure the larger ones get a worse ratio so just analyze the cheapest. French Valley is the newest part of the Temecula Valley and has the most foreclosures (usually in the top 25 of the country). The biggest drawback with those is the location. They require the use of the 215 or winchester road for many miles, which is a nightmare because of all the houses out there. I can literally get to Escondido from South Temecula faster than I can get to French Valley during commuting hours. For people who work South of here, that is the least desirable place and can double their drive time from the North County. I have a friend who works in Vista who moved out there from temecula and complains that he doubled his commute time, the roads just haven’t caught up and with the slowdown in R/E they may be delayed further, if it’s unicorporated, forget about it. I wish all of the negatives weren’t true because when I was looking for a rental there were great deals and tons for rent out there and lots of repos, I just don’t want to live there and will pay more to live further South, I imagine other renters and buyers feel the same way. I would also be very wary of investing in Murrieta with any company that wants to handle your investment property and shows you how you can make money (I hope you didn’t hear about this in church), there are few hundred investors still licking their wounds from a similar investment scanario.
Lastly I think the whole valley is a bad investment for a landlord if you need to count on 2k or more in rent. At that price, renters can just buy their own and I see the rental stock in the 1500 range as being tight with hundreds of choices at the 2k price. Rents decrease as you move North and East and inventory rises, these houses are in the North East.
