Good time to invest in Houston?

[Arun Iyengar]

I am an investor based in California.

After Hurricane Harvey, I figured that investing in Houston apartments that weathered the storm with no water damage would provide value. Particularly as the housing stock had supposedly come down quite a bit, and with rebuilding needed, there was going to be a strong demand to take up any vacancy in any of the existing apartments.

With this thought, I put a bid to purchase a larger apartment complex in Houston. To no great surprise, there were others thinking the same way and the property had over 8 bids. The seller went through 2 rounds, and my bid was chosen to get to the 2nd round. In the interim, I contacted some local realtors to get the lay of the land and one of them gave me a lot of information that questioned my thesis to invest in Houston. He said that only a small fraction of apartments were damaged and these were far below the total number of vacant units.

So the question to the community would be whether my going in premise was flawed or is the realtor feedback flawed? I did decide not to increase my offer in the 2nd round and just found out that the seller had decided to go with someone else. Did I miss out on an opportunity?