Have been to Houston in 2013 and from my memory it gave me a similar profiling to Perth, WA very resource centric (mining, oil&gas) next to energy rich region and liked that the city was big yet not maddening as the NY/LA's of the world.

The amount of digital ink that is spilled on this site about LLC's and how to set up complex structures  by folks who can hardly be called investors is a bit maddening to me as it keeps folks from actually investing dues paralysis by analysis due to things that really do not mater a great deal.

Quote from @Rian Madden: 'Sell the Portland property and invest in another state that doesn't hate landlords.Beyond that, it's hard to give advice without knowing specifically what you are trying to accomplish.

I met the bank appraiser during his visit, and he shook his head at my purchase price in amazement.A year later, a duplex, now valued at $240K was advertised in the papers for $180K, also by an agent.

So we agreed on a price, shook hands and signed some papers.

Which all investors are to a certain degree. id say you are your going to waste more money in additional interest payments alone vs paying a licensed architect never mind the exponetially maddening cost of wasted time/ additional interest payments die to a work stoppage, additional labor cost to redo whatever you have to take apart to add whatever building department issue you didnt do correct the first time. 

I simply shook my head.Unfortunately social media has made it easy for these bad actors to get in front of their target clientele and it's normally the  clients who have no liquidity, poor credit and very low chances for success to begin with in this business and put these courses/mentorship on their credit cards who fall even further behind. 

So we agreed on a price, shook hands and signed some papers.

The other party of two, kind of shook their heads, and jogged down a small list of why they don't like them.

Maddeningly, this question remains very controversial and somewhat subjective.