“Weekend” home for real estate investing - Houston area

[Swetha Narayanan]

Hello everyone, my husband and I are new to the idea of real estate investing and have been listening to bigger pockets podcast for a few months now. We are interested to explore what  viable options there are in Houston and maybe move forward with a deal in 2020 if it works out. The goal is not necessarily to make money each month, if that happens that would be great, but hopefully we would break even. We usually have about $2-3k/month for spending/investment purposes. We were looking for some ideas or input ... 

We have new construction (we are not very handy or good with maintenance) house, bought 1.5 yrs ago conventional financing, in the Texas City area and we both work outside the city. We’re young professionals and would like to have a place in Houston (inner loop) that we can use on occasion like on weekends but we’ll still be living full time in our house in Texas city. 

I’ve been looking at HAR at the following 3 set ups -

1) multifamily - this would be ideal as we’d have our separate unit to use when we’re there and can rent out the others. However, hard to find a “nice” updated property that we would feel comfortable living in and many are very expensive as it is. Also with the price ranges it seems hard to cash flow or even break even without renting each unit 

2) single family house with garage apartment - limited number of properties, but would allow us to rent out the main house and use the garage apt once in a while. 

3) townhouse with low hoa fee (<300/month) - something thats 2 beds 2 baths minimum,   2 stories, preferably <$250-275000 we would keep one room for us and find renter(s) for the other room(s). These properties seem newer, there’s way more options on the market, but not sure if realistically we can (or legally allowed  per Houston laws or hoa rules) to rent out just a bedroom or two if we don’t live there full time to monitor “roommates”

4) single family with same set up as #3 - leaning against because of exterior maintenance, which would fall on the renter or us/hire someone 

Any other ideas? Critiques or thoughts to the ideas I have listed? Also for financing, if we intend to live there at least part of the year do we still qualify for the same loans? 

It’s hard to get ideas into practical goals so thank you in advance!