All Forum Posts by: Swetha Narayanan

Thanks for the points everyone, the flexibility of having a place to stay when we want to is what’s appealing but that’s also why they have hotels :) we still need to figure out realistically how much time do we plan to spend in Houston. If we went the townhouse or house with garage apartment route, it would ideally be like what you mentioned - someone (student, professional) who rents a room and gets the house to themselves most of the time but is still ok with the idea of being a roommate. Now how much someone would be willing to pay for that kind of roommate setup or how we would find them is another issue ...

Hmm, I wasn’t looking for an Airbnb or short term rental property although I know that’s typically how vacation homes are run so let me try and clarify. We would definitely get a realtor involved when we narrow down what we’re looking for/saved appropriately for that! 

What I was wondering is if there are other people who have done something creative with their second home purchase or if there were other ideas we should look into. I couldnt find a similar thread in the forums for houston ... There are a lot of people that talk about house hacking their first home or primary residence (which would be our house in Texas city), that’s not what we want to do, or getting a multifamily and living in one unit and renting out the others (which would be great but for the reasons stated in my post, not sure if thats good option for starting out). We are interested in a second residence (yes it’s just an idea at this time, not pulling the trigger without learning more) because we would like the convenience of a place in the city but also if we could make it a good investment. We could just buy a one bedroom condo that we use once in a while and call it a day, but from what I’ve read those are generally not good investments long term 

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!