suggestions?

Here are some key highlights from the report, which compares January 2025 with January 2024:The median sales price for the greater Austin metro fell 4.7% to $409,765, while the City of Austin saw a 4.7% increase to $553,465.Total sales in the metro rose 1.1%, whereas the city saw a 4% decrease in closed sales, demonstrating continued demand in spite of economic challenges.Pending sales under contract dropped 7.5% in the metro and 1.4% in the City of Austin, suggesting a slight decrease in demand at the start of 2025.Listing inventory increased 16.5% in the metro and 15.5% in the City of Austin, resulting in 5.6 months of available housing inventory in the metro and 6.2 months in the city, approximately one month more than in January 2024.According to the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, a balanced real estate market has around 6.5 months of inventory.

If you're working with a realtor, they should be able to suggest a few.

My suggestion would be to buy a place to be a mid term rental and experiment with short term during the vacancy gaps. 

Any suggestions, advice, or experience you could give me.

great suggestions @Dave Foster - thank you!

Although I wouldn't suggest this and you don't need to do this, most lenders have a due on sale clause and this could be triggered (altough low probability) when transferring title out of a borrowers name. 

I work with several real estate developers across the country and they all do it differently.My suggestion is to find a property type and an area/neighborhood/city/market that you are drawn to and plot your course from there.As for the amount of money you'll need, it's gonna be mostly driven off the purchase price of the property.

Additionally I would suggest having the long term financing relationship built so that they can easily transition the deal after renovation. 

While I'm not in Indy, I might suggest you share some more details of what you're looking for in this coffee meeting and/or share what part of the real estate world you're most interested in learning about for this first meeting.