My guess is that the percentage of the unethical, the dumb, and the good is probably the same proportion as it is in other professions.  

In my opinion the real estate remain still a good investment/business because has the "SLOW" characteristic that means that do not react directly proportionally with the stock market and no matter is going to happen the people needs a roof...Anyway, about the Houston market, I was just reading from the Houston Business Journal that the top 10 jobs are based on medical and/or import/export industries, no one was in the oil & gas area.Another KPI is that Houston have still a shortage of houses respect to the request.However, if you driving around downtown/uptown you can see a lot of new buildings/condo/town etc... that are ready to open...In conclusion, I think there are a lot of opportunities in the Clutch city...

Things like this get reported out of proportion to what really happens and all it does is make us timid and fearful and suspicious of every shadow around the corner.

Full disclosure: I haven't made a purchase in that area for over a year and my latest appraisal (for the BECU HELOC) came it at $150K for the smallest one, so I'm guessing comparable deals are proportionally more expensive.  

:) Very true, Rachel.Of course, the ease of entry in the stock market reflects the risk of loss - they are directly proportional.

It was a MAKE-UP COMPACT, rectangular shape, lodged by two opposite corners.

Occasionally on a complicated transaction, I can see out contract package in Maryland/DC expand to 100 pages.I think the length of our contracts is proportional to the amount of lawyers we have in the area, since we have the most lawyers per capita by a huge amount here.

I'm finding (what it seems to me is) a bigger proportion of cases where "market value" only makes sense for an owner occupant, not an investor (even for multis).

So your property taxes may increase approximately proportional to rent increases, meaning this logic and approach may not work for you unless rental increases exceed property tax increases substantively.

Now some expenses will remain proportional to the rents (property management) and some remain proportional to the properties values (insurance, taxes).