That’s not financially intelligent 

We currently manage over $650 million in single-family assets for very intelligent investors from around the country and those investors are adding over 1,000 properties to their portfolios in 2019. 

I suppose I just drop in when I feel the need to find intelligent life out there.

This is what the intelligent investors do, they'll even have multiple refi exit strategies as well to make sure their income/credit/assets qualify (extra cash reserves, payoff car as an option, payoff debt as an option, co-borrower as an option, etc). 

Crowdfunding in recent years has made it feasible for small investors to get exposure to asset classes previously available only to rich folks.Benjamin Graham made the point in The Intelligent Investor when he observed either you have to know how to do it yourself or you have to know how to hire the right people to do it for you.

Houston area RE market at best is flat in 2019 so long as oil prices can not be artificially be inflated probably for decades.

No one can do much about property  taxes because they were kept artificially low for too many years in the city when compared with nearby suburbs.

They have been artificially low for a long time and really still are low.

Also, it could be that a line item or some could have been low/high for only a certain period of time and has only been corrected/fixed int he last couple of months (ex. leaking pipes leading to higher utilities, renovating every unit with budgeted capital so turns are artificially low). 

Those areas have simply not come back much and/or were artificially inflated during the boom.So just because there was a previous purchase of 180k on this house, you should not assume it will appraise out at 180k.