To get technical, when UCLA forecast regions they factor port and airport traffic numbers as indicators along side many other things.

I am a newbie in the world of real estate, still learning and gaining as much knowledge as possible, alongside my partner, before we make the first real step into this journey of REI.

Hedge funds and investors have driven the real estate market up three times the price since 2008.If and when we have another hiccup in the job market we could face the same situation, however wages have decreased and debts have increased.

The difference in the zoning and the actual use created some hiccup for the conventional financing underwriters.  

@S TaylorThere are two ways for the IRA participant to invest alongside her IRA in real estate. 

Welcome @Donna Chaia, we work along side with real estate professionals all over the state of Florida.

I have a desire to support uplifting/encouraging art in Houston, for the art (music, performing arts, visual arts) is the heartbeat of the culture of a city, help propel the local church I am a part of to new levels of influence and ability to help (they have a large prison and drug addict ministry), and to provide future employment/contract work that can help establish good character and personal development in said employees.Real Estate/Business has the potential to impact on a city level what would be nearly impossible to do in the position of a W2 salary, even at higher levels in the corporate ladder IMO.This impact potential gets me absolutely jazzed.And so since November I have devoured books, burned through podcasts, employed my excel and access skillz, joined a local REI club, met up with local investors, read numerous BP threads/blogs, and now begun the actual deployment of action steps.The beginning of March has marked the real start of a new endeavor along side my engineering day job... heading down the Wholesaling route, seeing as deals are the must-have corner stone for this entire business. 

But we managed to get through those minor hiccups.

That's why they will happily lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to a first time home buyer who can barely afford it with no track record of managing debt, but not to a real estate investor with a net worth of hundreds of thousands of dollars that weathered on of the worst real estate markets in the past century without a hiccup.

If I think about this too hard I imagine myself holding up a mirror to a mirror where my eyes are rolling into the back of my head like a pathogenic animal and I'm trapped inside infinite regress...I love landlording and want to build a rental empire that includes retirement income alongside a way to revitalize my neighborhood.