Somewhat new here - from Houston Texas

[Theodore Thorpe]

Hello everyone!

I am new here and not really new here at the same time. This is my first (or maybe second or third) post after signing up on BP! I signed up a few years back, lurked here for a bit, never really posted. Today is the day I am aiming to change.

A bit of background: I am currently 20 years old and own outright 2 properties. One is simply raw land in Colorado that is off-the-grid, the other is a single-family residence in Wichita Falls, Texas. I am from the Houston, Texas area and haven't really traveled much, besides the places I now own. Real estate has piqued my interest and love learning more about it. The event that really got me serious about real estate was a natural disaster (literally). I and my family went through Hurricane Harvey in 2017 which brought this city down to its knees. Rain was dumped upon us on a scale that I or the city had never seen before since recorded history. I and my father had just come from our RV trip from Colorado on my land, and lived quite frugally there for 2 weeks (off-the-grid, ahem) and very much enjoyed the scenery. We came back 1 week before the hurricane struck. 1 week. Needless to say, we are still recovering from that. From one bad thing comes a good thing I guess. It definitely inspired me and my father to do something vastly different to better from that low point.

Some other miscellaneous stuff: I am very technologically inclined. My phone number is listed as "Tech Support" to many in my family and friends. I am also not new to online forums either. I used to moderate a forum [cupoflinux.com] which helps out other people on their issues on the Linux operating system [Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Red Hat, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Manjaro, etc.] and also to help users switch from Mac or Windows should they choose to do so. Still love Linux to this day.

Now to the present: I bought the house in Wichita Falls very recently [Feb 2019] and am working to improve upon it. It is in fixer-upper status right now, but it is in livable shape as it sits right now (maybe only just, depending upon an individual's standards of living). My primary reason for having this single family residence is for renting. The home was built in 1930/1931 according to the county and is a short drive away from Midwestern State University and downtown Wichita Falls, almost in between those places.

The question is this:

1. Should I rent it out as is and rehab the house at a later date?

2. Should I postpone renting for now and rehab whenever I can afford to do so? (I'd rather stay away from loans and debt if at all possible)

3. Should I just leave it as is as a rental and never rehab?

I am also contemplating selling the Colorado land. I don't think I will be able to do much with it as it sits at this point in time. Just a future possibility.

I am looking forward to connecting with you all!

Theodore.