Fort worth, Dallas Texas help with investment strategy

[Harinder Singh]

Hello everyone, 

So I am currently living in NY and considering moving to Fort worth Texas. However, I am uncertain about the time frame, but my ideal situation would be finding a duplex or triplex in a C to B class neighborhood and living with low to no money out of pocket for monthly expenses. However, the property taxes are very high and I would like to know from fellow investors and real estate agents about the market and if house hacking is possible with a profit? Also, is there flipping opportunities in fort worth area? What strategies work great in this area? And finally, would it be better to have Airbnb or long-term tenants? 

Thank You

[Andrew Postell]

@Harinder Singh thanks for posting! Always great to hear from a fellow Texan (or a future one at least). Bigger Pockets does have some good state specific forums and Texas is their most active forum. Feel free to post there if you ever need some more "local" advice about things.

I also moved here from New York.  I miss a lot about New York but Texas also has some great features to it.  There's pros and cons to everything I guess but I don't regret moving here.  Some things to know about multifamily investing:

• Cash Flow - you will NEVER be cash flow positive on a property that you live in.  You are occupying one of the units.  It's just not possible to cash flow when you are occupying one of the income producing units...I mean, I guess there's exceptions to everything but 99% of the time, you aren't going to cash flow.  So the expectation here is to have a significantly LOWER housing expense.  Maybe even pretty close to $0...but just not be cash flow positive.  After you move out though, you'll be cash flow positive.
• Texas - this took me some getting used to but there are SO FEW multifamily properties here. I think we have about 10,000 homes for sale in the entire Dallas/Fort Worth metro area (population of 8million)....and maybe 100 of those are multifamily?  I mean there's next to none.  The reason?  Land here is so cheap!  In New York (specifically the city and surrounding burrows, etc) land is so EXPENSIVE that builders have no choice but to build multifamily units or the numbers just don't work. Here in Texas, they can build a single family home on 1 acre of land!  It's like they are just giving away property here!  So the method of homebuilding is very different.  This doesn't mean you cannot find a 2-4 unit property but you might be a little hard pressed to find exactly what you are looking for.  There's nothing wrong with just buying a single family home, living in it for 1 year, and then making that a rental afterwards.  That's what I did at least.

Anyway, I hope some of this helps.  Feel free to post some more if you need anything else.  Thanks!