My thought is I buy a multi-fam (off market preferably) and house hack for 2 years then move south.

I tried using the Rently boxes twice, just didn't seem to work in my market.

Once you find a house that you believe would be a good rental, meaning desirable to your target market of customers (people within a couple of mile radius of the place), and all of the costs of monthly ownership that you can accurately project fall below the rental amounts that you project that you can get from your target customers, then you have a possible business asset that you can use to produce income, and have renters pay down the mortgage, while hopefully it goes up in value at least with the rest of the economy. 

Many of the most successful (read as: founders that are worth well into the 9 figures, have survived multiple market cycles, etc) syndicators I know started by working in real estate for other companies.  

Being a forward-thinking investor allows your portfolio to be more resilient in times of economic downturns or market fluctuations.

Or a general rough number for interior painting.I fully understand every market will be different.

@Jenna MeditzThere are MANY new options on the market, RentRedi, TenantCloud, Apartments.com, Hemlane, Rentec.

@Brenda FreemanI think seller finance can make sense when you can get an at or above market price; you don't need the proceeds; you want the monthly income; and delaying the proceeds will make sense from a tax perspective.If you are saying there's an existing mortgage you would have to pay off yourself, then I don't think that makes any sense - why would you want to invest your own cash to make this work?

You got me excited.I thought it was in Toledo, Ohio lolWong market mate.Might as well be in Toledo in Spain haha

After Fort Worth and before Austin, the other two cities in the top 5 were Phoenix, Arizona (No. 3) and Sacramento, California (No. 4).Other Texas cities in the top 25 best large economic boomtowns were El Paso (No. 16) and San Antonio (No. 23).We've seen major growth in the Sacramento real estate market.