Hi all, newbie to property and Houston here

[Andrew Porter]

Hey everyone,

I've just moved to Houston from Australia but I'm originally from the UK. I'm excited to be in a local market when it appears that prices aren't crazily high and, judging by the new place I've rented the rental prices are quite high compared to the buying price (when comparing to London or Australia of course) so there should be some decent yields out there.

I'm new to property in general also so have been blitzing through some podcasts and books and hope to have better knowledge by the time my credit rating has a chance to build over a year or so.

In addition to the above education it would great to get some Houston specific information so if anyone can share some good links for reading up, any charts/graphs of historic house prices, area guide links, work out if prices/yields here are currently perceived to be high/low or anything in general you feel would be a help.

Differences for me coming from the UK would be that public transport links are very important when deciding where to invest, where as here it doesn't seem to have much relevance as everyone drives but I imagine other fundamentals like Jobs, schools, shops, non-flood areas are still as important. I'd also be keen to find out peoples opinions on whether Houston has enough diversification in the job market or if it's too dependent on the oil industry and if that gets replaced/winds down in 25-60 years (a debatable point I know) would the housing market still stand up or would you get another Detroit-like scenario where the demise of the car industry destroyed house prices?

Thanks and with some help hopefully I'll also be replacing some of my British terminology with some Texan :)

Andrew

[Jeremy Pakalka]

@Andrew Porter Welcome to BP and Houston! First off, we say "ya'll" instead of everyone. Houston has a horrible public transportation system but we have always looked to improve it. The light rail project started a couple of years ago and it is still improving. We also broke a world record for most amount of accidents in the first year of operation! Give it time.

The most important issues in Houston are flood zones and schools. There are certain areas I would stay away from like Meyerland, unless you get one heck of a deal. The area continues to flood and there are new rules in place about lifting the house if you want to rehab it. One lady was on the news this month about her house flooding for a 4th time in the last 2 years.

I am not worried about Houston becoming the next Detroit. We are an oil city and most of our economy is derived from it. However, Texas has some of the best laws and taxes for businesses to set up shop. This continues to bring more and more businesses to Houston, which helps to stabilize the local economy. At the same time, the oil companies are spending the most money on finding new energy sources. They know their businesses cannot be sustained for the next 100 years without branching out. If there is a new source of energy, they will be the first to jump on the train. We are years and years away from that being possible even if a new source was discovered tomorrow that was viable. It would take that long to set up the infrastructure for the new source. Think about all the gas stations across America and they would have to be replaced with the new source.