Investing in Austin Rental Properties

[Vu V.]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to BP and the real estate world and would love to get some insights on buying my first rental property.

A bit about me, I'm a full-time engineer living in Oxnard, California. I'm looking to build a cashflow portfolio and have done a decent amount of research (mostly podcasts and articles) on the type of property I should be looking at. From what I've read, duplexes and triplexes can be a good way to start.

In California, buying a duplex can be quite challenging (price point, etc.) so I've been looking out of state, specifically in Austin,TX due to the newly planned Tesla factory and Apple campus. Being an engineer, I can predict how this will impact the tech-based migration. 

I'm wondering if the BP community can give me some insights on how the news on these developments has impacted the general real estate scene in Austin, especially the surrounding areas of these projects? Also, I also would like to learn more about how other long-distance investors have been managing their properties in Austin? Lastly, I'm frugal by nature so I have no experience on how best to estimate rolling expenses of owning properties in Austin so if there are some insights on this, they would be greatly appreciated.

To give this a bit more meat, let's say I'm estimating a 4 bed/2 bath duplex in East Austin.

Looking forward to learning more about you and your experience :)

Thank you!

Vu

[Ryan Kelly]

@Vu Vuong Welcome to BP! Here in Austin, the market has been on fire for well over a decade and those news stories are just fuel to already high demand. Apple and Tesla are just two of the hundreds of tech companies expanding their presence here. Duplexes are in high demand, and most of them are at least 30+ years old, so expect to put in some elbow grease to build you me equity in these properties. A duplex in the city limits will at least start in the $300k range, with most of them being $400k or higher. You might find a few cheaper ones in the suburbs, but not as much inventory of duplexes in those areas.