If you’ve been active in the area, I’d love to hear your take—what’s working, what’s not, and anything I should watch out for.Appreciate any tips or advice you’ve got?

Watch it for a while, track listings, see what sells and what doesnt, what areas move quickly, etc.

I recently watched an episode of BiggerPockets where the guest discussed how he started a real estate investment company and buys commercial properties with 0% down.

The Federal Trade Commission watches trends in reports, they don't address single reports.

And, yes, there are years of data points to validate that just within my office, tens of thousands of dollars of wasted appraisal and inspection fees for deals (mostly not mine, thankfully) that had 0.00% of going anywhere but the "Loan Application Declined" bin. 

And IMHO, the prices are dropping big time (on avg. 10K/month...houses that were above 300K a year ago are not selling at 250K now) and the available rentals saturation is worse than I seen during summer season (with rents dropping from 1$-1.08/sqft to 0.8$/sqft and very little contacts and applications...just go in Zillow and look how many rentals are on the market now in Kyle, New Braunfels or Converse). 

We lived in two of the last five years up until July 2026.I haven't been like I should watching the market like I should.

Applicant shows a DUI class B misdemeanor from 2021 - “driving while intoxicated”.

For this post, the long story short is that no cats were on the application but lo and behold, there are 4 cats in the house during my first inspection.

As you read these books, watch the BiggerPockets podcasts.