All Forum Posts by: John Bannister

North Houston is not worth buying at the moment.  Everything is overpriced and the market is saturated with buyers.  I am just waiting out the stupidity.  On the other side of this we will still have 10% of the population unemployed and ready to sell.

@Nathan Boyer

Figure out the problem before freaking out. A roof leak does not necessarily mean replacing a roof. It could just be something relatively insignificant. I had a leak on a 3 year old roof once. It was fixed in 3 hours. Get a roofer out to look at it. In my area they will give you quotes for free. Just understand the problem fully before making any big moves.

@Sam Shueh

This is an honest question, why would you buy a property that doesn't cashflow well? Is the approach just to buy in areas appreciating quickly and refinance out the equity after seeing growth?

@Clint Galloway

I invest in SFs Houston and San Antonio. San Antonio is one of the fastest growing cities in the US and Houston is still crunched from Harvey in many ways. The point is that both are relatively large cities with lots of people needing rentals. In neither case do I plan on appreciation. When I crunch my numbers, I purposely neglect appreciation. The reason is because it is the most conservative way look at a deal. Think about it this way, if for some reason the area tanks, do you want a property that offers a 5% return or a 10%? I treat appreciation as a nice to have, but I never bank on it.

@Nicholas Munford

Because everyone thinks oil and gas is this mythical business where they drop piles of money on your desk everyday for the rest of your life. The reality is that it is a cyclical beast, and the next cycle may be the one where you are out on the street with no jobs available. I picked real estate because it is steady / tangible and not subject to the collective freak outs we see in the stock market.

@Natalie Hahn

I would sell but I live in a dramatically different market than you. To do a side by side comparison, I have a friend with 450k in paid off property and he is making over 5k a month. That being said, he is in TX (and I have no idea if you want to invest out of state). Either way, you would probably even be better off to sell and stick it in index funds. If you hold it you are basically banking on appreciation to make it a solid investment. Just my thoughts.

@Joseph Weisenbloom

I work in the middle of the Sahara desert in a compound guarded by the Algerian army (not joking). We have cell phone service even there...