All Forum Posts by: Austin McConnell

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $149,800
Cash invested: $7,500

This is a single-family home we bought and lived in for a couple of years before moving and renting it out. The property has decent cash flow for now, but the area is showing strong appreciation and moderate rent increases so the cash flow should keep improving over time.

@Jason Hirko Good to hear that there are 2-4 unit multi deals in the Austin area. That's exactly what I'm looking to do. Quick question. Do you require 6, 9, or 12 months seasoning before a refinance? I've heard that 6 months used to be quite common, but now 9 or 12 is more likely. Just curious what you require.

@Joe Scaparra Thanks for the welcome! We just moved in and boxes are everywhere, so it will probably take a couple weeks to get settled, but I will definitely reach out after that. I've heard that a lot with about the Austin area. I guess I was hoping that wouldn't be so true regarding the surrounding cities (Round Rock, Georgetown, Cedar Park) vs Austin proper.

That being said, College Station holds a special place in my heart and I would definitely consider investing there too. For your CS properties, are they all long-term leases or do you have some air-bnb type short-term rentals for football-weekends, etc?

Hey, @Matthew Teifke. Thanks for reaching out. I would love to connect and talk real estate. I'll send a connection request.

@Jarrod Weaver That's great to hear. I can't wait to get to the area and start getting to know people.

Hey, @Kelby K. Thanks for the welcome! Okay great. I'll message you when we get to town. We can meet up for coffee or something.

In the short term (1-3 years), I'm mostly interested in residential multifamily for the house-hacking capability. Being able to live free or nearly free would really boost saving up for the next downpayment.

Long term (5-30 years), I am more open to single-family residential as well as multifamily.

I primarily want to buy-and-hold for long-term net worth gains, but would consider flips if that's all the market is providing. I hear the Austin area is thin on cashflow right now so it could be flips are the norm. Although I will try to find off-market deals too, of course.

Hello! I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Austin McConnell and I will be moving to Austin soon for a new job. My wife and I are very interested in the Austin area and we look forward to exploring all the trails and amazing food.

As far as real estate goes, we will be renting out our house in FW so we'll finally get to rental property Number 1! (you have to start somewhere, right?). Long term, I'm interested in buying a property every 1 to 2 years. Right now I'm more interested in simply meeting people in Austin who are also passionate about real estate. From this forum, it seems like there is quite a bit of interest!

We will be moving in a few weeks to the southwest Austin area (renting an apartment for a year while we get to know the area and save up). I hope to start attending REI club meetings soon after.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and start getting to know people. Oh, and I went to Texas A&M University so if anyone can tell me where to buy my Maroon Shield, I'll make sure to get one before we move ;-). Any other Aggies out there?

I saw something strange today and wanted to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.

I had my eye on a HUD house that popped up in my area. The house was classified Insure-Escrow and had a 15 owner-occupant bid period with a 10 day bid collection period. As far as I understand the process, HUD will collect the bids for 10 days and review on the 11th day. If no acceptable bids, there will be daily collection and review periods for the next 5 days until the 16th day when investors are allowed to bid.

As I plan to live in the house for a few years while fixing it up and saving up the next downpayment, I placed a bid in the initial bid period for owner occupants. That 10 day collection period was scheduled to end tonight at 11:59:99, but the hudhomestore listing disappeared around 10am today roughly 14 hours early.

Clicking on the property in my saved property list, I get the message that "This property is not listed for sale at this time". I can only take that to mean another bid was accepted and the property taken off the market. But how can that happen if the initial bid collection period was not up?

Granted, I got my bid in last week and if it simply wasn't accepted, fine. But we debated taking more time to run some numbers, get some quotes, and make a bid today before the cutoff at midnight. If we had waited, we wouldn't have gotten a bid in at all!

Has anybody seen this type of thing before? Am I missing something?