You can really pick where you want to be on the "comfortability to profitability" scale here where I felt like those options in most markets were limited. 3) it's a great place to live all-around.

Trade some comfort for financial stability.Part of attaining financial success is being simultaneously optimistic and paranoid. 

The owners became friends with the tenants and do not feel comfortable raising rents on their friends. 

You’re already doing the right thing by plugging into a community like this—plenty of folks here who’ve been in your shoes and are willing to help.I’m from Leesburg - and would love to connect.

If I were in your shoes, I’d focus on house hacking in Phoenix by exploring multi-family properties or using the BRRRR strategy with undervalued single-family homes.

In fact, in that mastermind group, I connected with a lot of high-level investors and that’s where I got the confidence to start investing in Costa Rica with partners that I met in that mastermind group.Your brother gave me some good advice of how to run a debt fund, which was super helpful.With regards to the lease option model, I feel super comfortable with it and I’ve done enough to see how profitable lease options are and I would say they’re much more profitable, and require a lot less effort once you are used to them, than any other type of real estate I’ve done over the past 15 years.I posted some numbers above that showed the difference of doing a partnership model or a debt model.

I wouldn't be comfortable buying a cheap property and not actually rehabbing it. 

Put yourself in the shoes of an investor: is the property in a good market?

______Make it make sense.As someone who grew up in California, this tells me two things:1) you don’t know what you are talking about and are very comfortable with your ignorance;2) you won’t even take two minutes to find facts.If the hydrant system relies on electric pumps and in some areas there’s no power, then there is no water.

If I were in your shoes, I would set up keyword alerts for the Texas cities you're interested in as well as any other keywords that are relevant to your plans.