While there are fewer native Austinites left, if you find them—especially older residents—they can be an invaluable resource for inside information.Get involved locally: Once the tourists and college students leave for summer or holidays, you’ll realize Austin is still a small town at heart.

You can hear real-world examples of how others have built their investment portfolio and (hopefully) learn to avoid their mistakes.

These sorts of shot-crete build homes are more standard than a bale or mud home but are still not standard like a stick built home.Geodesic domes are cool but harder to sell than a standard home.

New built for starting out could be a bit challenging.

Furnishing it, years passing by commercial buildings built behind the townhouse.

we did that except instead of renovating it we knocked the existing home down and built a new primary. right after we were completed we had $500k in equity as we acted as the GC on the project. 

I am also from the B/CS area and have some investment properties in town.

I would be able to manage the finances, marketing and showings even while working but maybe not attend to the small stuff such as getting a random call to fix something stupid at 3pm when I'm 6 hours out of town or on my 30th day of night shift 12s. 

Home built in 2005. 

I did an FHA 203K loan and it was a pain but it worked out and I built the necessary equity to BRRRR.