Newbie soon to be in Fort Worth, currently in Houston, TX

[Michael Henry]

I was introduced to the podcast by a close friend nearly 5 years ago, and since I’m in a transition phase personally, now is a good time to get a little more serious with real estate.

I currently live in Houston, TX, and will be moving to Fort Worth in about 6 months. My wife and I are both in the medical field. My real estate experience is limited, I’ve used a property manager to rent a previous house out of state. Overall the experience was good, good company, same tenant the entire time (2009-15), etc, etc, the only/biggest downside was the house was not a good rental property numbers wise, so it was a relatively expensive lesson.

I will likely rent my current house out when we move. The #’s will be a little more in my favor. There are other details I’ll have to work out.

My goals in Fort Worth will be to start building more equity using RE, ultimately cash flow, but that isn’t as important in the short term. I don't know how specific that goal actually sounds. My wife’s family is in the area, so there is potential for us staying in the area for a long time.

An situation would be multi family (duplex or triplex), likely living in one of the units (my family, or potentially my mom). I am in no hurry to buy anything. At this point since I don’t know what I don’t know, I’m just looking to get a lay of the land as I don’t know much about the area, and any insights would be greatly appreciated. We would like to be very close to the medical center (Baylor Scott White, JPS, Harris Health) since that is where my wife will be working. Houston traffic has really made me appreciate not having a long commute. School’s are less important since my youngest is 2 and my wife’s initial contract is 2 years and don’t think I need a college prep pre-school/kindergarten (sarcasm). I do understand the importance of schools in some rental markets, any experience with that in the FTW is appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’ll continue to soak up as much knowledge as I can with the forum.