San Jose Newbie RE Investors, investing in Oklahoma City

[Scott Poole]

My wife and I are tech managers in the Valley, looking to shift more of our portfolio into Real Estate.  Any resources that can help us learn for success are handy ones for sure.  Look forward to exchanging knowledge and ideas.

[Scott Poole]

@Naveed Q.,

We looked at the following cities in varying degrees of depth:

Tampa FL,
Austin TX,
Detroit MI,
Tucson AZ,
Phoenix, AZ
Denver, CO
Atlanta, GA
Memphis, TN
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
San Jose, CA

Several cities such as Seattle, San Jose were eliminated because of entry level was too high for us, and they are not landlord friendly states.

Austin, Denver and Portland we felt were overvalued markets in general, and in some cases likely bubbles.  I talked about Denver already on this thread, Austin has a similar situation with around 10% yearly appreciation compared to a rent growth rate of around 6%, additionally, salary growth has not kept pace.  The median list price in Austin I think is around $700,000 - that is approaching San Jose and I am insanely jealous of people who got into that market 7/8 years ago.  Today, I just don't see the upside.

Detroit, MI suffers from needing to prove it can survive without the auto industry, lacking sufficient industry diversification, and the housing supply is between 9-12 months, and houses are cheap, meaning renters could be hard to come by.

Tucson and Tampa got serious looks, and this is where the quality of life started to come into play.  Tampa is pretty good, Tucson less so but still decent, however Oklahoma won out per the investment theory I posted before.