New Investor Introduction in the Houston Market

[Grant Grabinoski]

Over the last 3.5 years we’ve worked to pay off all our debt, purchase our first primary residence, and save up a 6 month emergency fund. Sounds like Dave Ramsey right? At the time it’s what we needed to do. Soon after paying everything off we both took jobs at new companies and increased our income by 2.5 times.

Currently we AirBNB 1-2 rooms in our primary residence with about an 80% occupancy rate. We also do house sitting for some clients that brings in roughly $5k a year. On the weeks we house sit we also offer our entire house on AirBNB to bring in extra money from that business.

While paying off our debt we focused on reading real estate books and listening to Bigger Pockets Podcast to try and figure out what our investment strategy should be. We've practiced analyzing deals using the bigger pockets calculator and to be honest I don't think we really know what we want to do. We've looked at SFH, MF, and Self-Storage and we can really see ourselves doing all 3.

It seems like we are at the stage where we need to take action but honestly I’m not sure where we need to start. I know everyone has different starting points in their real estate investing but where do you recommend new people to start? What has really accelerated your learning when you first started? We have not made it to any local meet-ups nor do we really know anyone in the Houston Metro area but we’d love to meet others who have had success in this area.