I didnt start out to be a real estate investor......just an ordinary guy working 8-5 jobs. But, looking back, I made a lot of mistake and going forward, I want to do things in the right ways.

A little about my experience so far

First house

Bought our first house in Houston in 2014 with the novice intention of living in the house for the next 5-15yrs. In 2016, I decided to move to SW Florida for another job. Because of this, we decided to rent out the house in Houston for $1600 to a friend (mortgage was $1950).

Mistake-

Rented the house out below market price (5 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom, 2 family room, game room, media room, and a study (4150sqft house)). As a novice, I was thinking that paying $350 is not too much for me then.

Merit -

But, the good thing is that the house was appreciating and we currently have about 120k equity in the house.

Second House

We bought another fixer upper house in Florida in 2016 (biggest mistake) with the intention of living in the house for the next 10yrs plus. Note that we bought this property 4 month after moving to Florida. I guessed we watch too many episode of HGTV and this affected us in our decision making. We immediately procure all the materials that we will need for our fixer upper project.

Unfortunately, a month after we bought the new property, my wife secure another job in Dallas, Texas ( My job is quite flexible and I can work remotely most time) and we need to relocate back to Texas again.

We renovated the house in Florida and we spent about $60k rehabbing the house. We pratically change everything in the house from new flooring, new bathroom, new kitchen, rewiring the whole house, painting etc. We rented out the house for $2100

Mistake

Spending so much on the fixer upper project and not changing our plans after our circumstance changes

Merit

Positive cashflow of $150. Considering our initial investment of about $80k, this is nothing to write home about.

Third House

This is the first time we start thinking of actually investing in real estate we discovered BP) we are a little bit fortunate to buy the property 40K below market price (Listed for 170k and bought for 130k)

Mistake

Need a new roof

Merit

Cashflow of $600 a month.

Future

After listening to so many podcast and reading so many blog. We are ready again to buy another house (we want to buy minimum of 5 SFH/MFH in 2018). Dallas market is extremely crazy right now and beyond our budget (we are targeting houses below 150k). Houston market and San Antonio market seems to be within our budget range.

Our main issue is- where is currently a good area to invest in Houston? How can we get hold of good investment property. We are not Houston based and we dont have a network of whole sellers. MLS/Zillow/Trulia are not a good source of investment properties. How can we get hold of properties before they hit the market.

Houston, Texas

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