To invest in your local market or not?

[Aaron Kovac]

Hi All,

I live in the greater Austin area and am gathering information to eventually jump into investing. My dilemma is that I read a lot about people saying to understand your local market. I am a lender in Austin, dealing with primarily SFH's.

Austin is extremely competitive in SFH and even more so in the multi family space. My preference would be investing in multi family homes, but given the above- would it make more sense to look outside the Austin market and go for multi family homes or start in the Austin area with SFH's?

Thanks in advance!

[Joe Villeneuve]

Knowing your own market is important, but what you do with that knowledge is more important. Many REI say you should invest in your own market because you know it. That's wrong. That's backwards. You should know the market you invest in.

Just because you know a market, doesn't mean you should invest there.  In fact, if that knowledge tells you that market is a bad market to invest in, them don't invest there.  This especially applies to "your own market".