All Forum Posts by: Thomas Shaw

That's great man. I'm glad for you. And those are some pretty good numbers too!

Like I said, I grew up in that area and was hesitant when I saw deals over there, but maybe now I'll be a bit more open to it in the future. Keep us posted.

And to be honest, I shouldn't be too worried, I've got a rental over in La Marque, which also isn't the best area, and that's turned out really well too.

I grew up in Texas City. I know that area well. Do you have any concerns for finding and keeping good tenants. The Chelseas are considered a pretty rough area. I think I personally saw this deal, or a very similar one listed a while back and was hesitant on it just due to the possible renter base in the area.

What sort of rent are you getting?

So what sort of rent do you expect?

I grew up and lived in Texas City for ~30 years. @Garrett Brown is spot on.

Very blue collar, working class. Overall low crime and most neighborhoods are decent, but there are some sketchy parts of town.

On the flip side, it is unusual for a blue collar town in that it's pay is extremely high. It's based off of refinery work, so there are a lot of very very highly paid blue collar workers in the area, easily into the 6 figures fresh out of high school.

So you have The Chelseas, which is easily the worst part of town with lots of small MFHs, but then across town(and it's a small town, ~50-60k people) you have some homes going for 500k to a million.

I would say TC has been slowly declining for a long time. It's based on refinery work, which pays exceptionally well for not requiring a real education(think at least 100k starting.) 

So you have the local populace all moving to nicer areas in the county because they can afford it. This just slowly lead to a drain of businesses and such. It's really not a bad area, but not a great one either. 

And if you hop on I-45, which runs right near town, and head about 15 minutes north, you get to very very nice areas.

Pearland is where I live. It's got some multi-familys, but not a ton. There are some all around the county, but not a huge amount. The highest concentration(that I personally know of) is in TC.

Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll do my best to answer.

I grew up in Texas City.

It's fairly small. You have 3 elementary schools(K-4) Heights, Roosevelt-Wilson, and Kohfeldt. You typically just attend whichever school is nearest to you geographically. Heights was renovated when I attended(around 92 or 93.) And I believe one other school was recently redone as well.

One intermediate(5-6) Levi Fry.

One Jr. High(7-8) Blocker.

And Texas City High School.

Texas City, on average is a very blue collar type of place. It's main industry is refinery workers. Most of them make a ton of money and move to nicer parts of the county(Dickinson, League City, Friendswood, etc)

With that being said, TC was once a very nice place to live. We had national highschool football championships, won All-American City in ~2001. Very nice.

Some parts of TC are very nice, some parts are very not. Most of the multi-family(small multi-family) housing is in a part of town called "The Chelseas."  That is typically considered the "ghetto" of TC.

Most of the work has left the city. It's still the nicest area in southern Galveston County, but it's not great anymore, since everyone with money has left the area. The city is attempting to revitalize the downtown area since a lot of businesses have moved further north(League City, Webster area.) 

It does have a local community college(College of the Mainland) which is actually a great school.

@Jason Malabute

I'm honestly not sure where you might be able to learn more. I just happen to live in the area.

The part near SH-35 and FM-518 is usually called Old Pearland. Not that it is especially old(there are some pretty new subdivisions and nice homes in the area, but it definitely has some older homes too), but it is sort of the area where Pearland kinda started. It was a pretty small, undeveloped suburb that wasn't given much thought, but in the last decade or so, it has really blown up.

Once you go up FM-518 towards SH-288 you start getting into the new area. Lots of new construction. Homes as well as lots of commercial stuff. A large "city center" type of area with restaurants and shopping and such. Much more expensive area.

While I don't invest in the area, because as Jeph said, it's not super cheap to get into, and Pearland is considered a "nice" area, so properties are usually on the decent side. And from my experience, nice areas to live in don't seem to have the numbers for cash flow very often.

With that being said, I know there was a good bit of flooding done in the older parts during Harvey. So you might be able to find some properties at a discount that you could make work.

I'm fairly new myself, so I'm pretty limited in my knowledge on how to do deep analysis of cities and that you might be looking for.

I live in Pearland and I see a reasonable number of duplexes in my part of town(near 35 and 518.)

Two were actually just built this year, so they must be making someone, somewhere money. 

But in the newer parts of Pearland towards 288 I don't think there are hardly any in that area.

Hello,

I'm a reasonably new investor(got one rental) and I have been offered to get in on a deal(s) through a trusted family member. His niche is very different from what I am familiar with, so I'm having some trouble running the numbers and I thought I'd turn to you guys.

So he(my relative) has been doing this exact strategy for a few years and has done a good number of deals(~40) so I'm confident he knows what he's doing, but his strategy is as follows:

Buys a distressed trailer(mobile/manufactured home) repairs it, and then sells it to a tenant that either can't qualify for a normal loan, or doesn't have the money to purchase a normal home.

So for this particular deal, the numbers are as follows.

Purchase price of $5750.

Rehab of $8000.

Rehab should take roughly 3-5 days.

Selling we are assuming a month, but he says typically less.

Taxes are around 600/yr(which the new owner will pay) but accounting for the month we have it, $50.

The lot rent for the trailer is $350.

Closing costs would be maybe ~$100.

We'd sell it for ~22k, with a down payment of 2k at 14% interest for 75 months.

So our purchase and rehab would be ~$13850, plus a month of holding for $14250.

We'd get 2k back bringing our investment back down to $12250.

We'd bring in 400/mo from the mortgage payment.

As far as I can tell, this would be about 35-40% cash on cash return.

Please go over these numbers and tell me if I'm missing anything.