Houston Market - Overheating? Buy now or wait till it crash?

[John Vo]

I hope to get everyone's opinions of how the Houston market is doing and share what their strategy is for the coming months as well as 2017 for investment properties in Houston. I'll start off the discussion. I've been lucky enough to have bought two properties during "real estate crashes" and have cashed out on one, while holding the other. I'm looking expand my holding and currently looking at properties that cost $150,000 or less in the Katy, Cypress, Sugarland, and Richmond area for rental. I've been analyzing foreclosure properties from the MLS, HUD homes, off market properties as well as deals from wholesalers and I've got to say the margins are slim across the board, as far as the deals that I've come across. There's properties that were build in the 1980s or earlier that's trying to be sold off for $140K or more with minimal or no rehab been done to it. That's ridiculous! But that is the current market in Houston at least on the lower end of the price spectrum. I've read a lot of the news article regarding oil prices and come to the conclusion that no one knows what the oil price is going to do. There's just too many variables in the market. I would probably get a better answer consulting a psychic than listen to some of these oil and gas CEOs and their predictions. But surprisingly, properties values below the $200,000 have been steady. To me this doesn't make a lot of sense, where a large portion of the Houston economy is oil dependent and where oil and gas companies have been shedding jobs left and right, but prices for rental and SFH resales have increase in some case and/or remain steady. Yes, I know there's argument that Houston is economically diverse in not only oil & gas, but medical, etc... But the fact remains is that a large portion, my guess is 60% and that's a total conjecture, of the Houston economy is still oil and gas related. So the question remains, should I/we/investors interested in Houston wait until the market "crash" to jump in or buy a property where the best deal you can hope for is $0.90-$0.95 on the dollar with minimal to no rehab and hope for the best?