Move to Houston?

[Tom MacDonald]

Hi BP community!  I am hoping that there are some experienced investors out there who can weigh in on a big decision I am in the process of making.  I currently live in Sydney, Australia, and it is an absolutely beautiful place to live.  However, I have a rather high-stress job with long hours, and I find it difficult to enjoy life as much as I feel I should.  More than ever, I want to pursue my dream of becoming a successful RE investor, but I have found that it will be very difficult to start in Australia for various market and legal reasons.

My hometown of Houston, Texas, on the other hand, seems to be a great place for RE investing with low entry barriers, plus I have a lot of friends and family there to help support my efforts.  What I'm thinking is that I will move back to Houston within the next few months and quickly acquire my first property, hopefully a duplex via house hack.  Thus would begin my RE career, and I would transition to part-time work at my job as quickly as possible to focus on investing.

So there are probably a lot of naive assumptions in the above that you members will surely set me straight on.  I think my big question is this - how does Houston rank as far as a place to begin as an investor?  I'd feel better leaving the beaches of Australia if I knew that I was headed to a fairly auspicious market.

Thank you!
Tom