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