All Forum Posts by: Julie Williams

@Raphael Ramos thank you for asking after my son. So far he is in one piece and has not had COVID-19. He loves his new job working mostly behind the scenes. 

@Michael Baum, actually I have not made up my mind. There will be lots of head scratching and use of Bigger Pockets calculators next week. There is a tiny handful of decently priced properties in better towns and I am hoping one of those will pan out. I apologize for my paranoia. I am new here, and I once had a very bad experience with information sharing, when I was a faux finch artist and muralist. A house painter said "How on earth would you do that faux finish?" about a very difficult technique. I told him (there was a trick to it without which it would have been nearly impossible) and he underbid me by one or two thousand bucks. I have met other equally cutthroat folks over the years. Luckily I meet more nice people than cads. 

@Ola Dantis I just looked up the crime rate in Houston. The crime index is 56 (per thousand). The two small cities I am considering buying in have crime indices of 38 and 66 respectfully. I am glad I posted because 66 is too high for my liking. I am spoiled. I live in a town with a crime index of 1.6. You could basically strip, roll around in glue, roll around in hundred dollar bills, and walk down the street at 2 a.m., and although an officer of the law might ask you what the heck you were doing and ask you to go home, you would otherwise be left alone. 

@Greg M. I think you were speaking to Ola, but I got curious and looked up my town in the sex offender registry. One. One in a town of twenty-six thousand. 

@Joe Splitrock GREAT idea to buy near a school. Why didn't I think of that? 

@Larry Jonathan Denson My mother, who has gone on to her greater reward (at a very ripe old age) was from Mississippi. Her mother was a Texan. My mother would have said "You'll get your stars in heaven." 

There is some really clever writing on here. I'm enjoying the replies, thank you all. My lips are sealed until I have something under contract on the one hand, or decide the area is over hyped and I am not willing to invest there on the other. 

@Paul Sandhu "refinery ruffians"! LOL. You sure know how to turn a phrase. 

@Ben Codiroli people are visiting from New York City and Boston in droves. (It's safer than New York City, less safe than Boston.) It's hard to get an airbnb on the weekend, year round. Then they like it and buy second homes or relocate. I know people who have moved there and none of them checked out the crime statistics before they moved. One was a family with a baby and the other was the retired parents of one of the people in the couple. I'm in your camp, and it makes no sense to me, because of the crime, but that is what is happening. I just wish I had bought there a few years ago. I am more interested in long term tenants than airbnb but I am considering both. 

I may be buying investment property in an art town that is very hip and hot, with prices going up fast. It is still inexpensive to buy but won't be for long. There are problems there with drugs and crime, mostly property crime, some muggings. If you had an airbnb in a town like that, how would you handle disclosing to both potential renters and booked renters that they should be careful at night, lock their car and lock the house?