My friends are talking about investing in Austin as well (we are from CA), they've been there and think it's a nicer place among TX, young and vibrant place with some companies like Apple or Amazon.

imagine you’ve decided to invest in company bonds:        You see Coke, Pepsi, Tesla, Apple are all paying 5-7% but that’s not good enough.

It's the bad apple that spoils the bunch.

Required distros for tax consequence.At the same time I kinda snicker a bit since the buyer... the investor... thinks they found the next Apple or Tesla investment (and they are clearly the smartest in the room), and then go off the rails when it all goes south, I can't help but shake my head and have a small giggle.A fool and their money soon go separate ways, Yes, but don't you wonder how they got together in the first place?

I would recommend checking out the Bob Malecki podcast on BP and also the Note MBA podcast on your mobile device (apple and android).  

We use APR so we can compare apples to apples.

Don’t mix apples and oranges.I agree with Jake.

We initially got estimates to renovate our big barn  for 175-220k and ended up banging it out ourselves in 3 months on weekends and nights for 20k.

With it being a newer built home, it's hard to get comps that's truly apples to apples.

Make sure you compare apples to apples as they say