Hey everyone, I'm Todd and I am from Tyler, Texas.  Tyler is roughly 2 hours east of the Dallas/Fort Worth area, about the same from Shreveport, Louisiana , and about 4 hours from Austin.  

My only experience in real estate is from two previous personal homes in the past. I have zero experience as an investor.  

I have become sort of an adopted family member to a family who does have some initial experience in rentals. They were living in their home here and had to move to Austin, so they rented out their home here and purchased a second home in Austin.  Now they have just moved back here and they are preparing their Austin home to make an attempt to use that as more of a hotel type property, renting it for really short timeframes of about a week or so. I think they are mainly considering this because they like the idea of having a place to stay when they travel to Austin themselves.  They have purchased a third home back here in Tyler that they are currently occupying. 

I have been interested in doing something in real estate investing for some time and talking with them prompted me to quit putting it off and begin to take steps to actually take some action.  I do tend to over-analyze and this seems like a large initial step and I would hate to get started by making a mistake. 

I work full time for an electronics systems contractor company.  We sell, install and service commercial electronics systems including Nurse Call Systems, Fire Alarm Systems, Intercom Systems, Security Camera Systems, and Access Control Systems to name a few. I have been a residential electrician in the past and have also done some framing carpentry work on new homes, so I am familiar with how they are put together. 

I have been ramping up my contributions to the retirement plan and putting money into a ROTH, but last year I was looking at how that is going and it doesn't look like it is going to be enough to make for a comfortable retirement unless I continue on until I am almost dead.  So I am looking at taking more control and finding better options. Buy and Hold Rental Investing is what I have mainly been interested in.  I do not know much about flipping or other options.  Building up to multiple rental incomes seems like a pretty straight forward way to get to my goals. 

I do landscape photography as a hobby with a small bit of income from the sale of prints, and I have done some real estate photography.  I figure this might come in handy at some point in the process. 

It appears that there is a massive amount of information to absorb here, so I will continue to read and watch and soak up as much as I can while putting cash back to get ready to dive in. This appears to be a very helpful and encouraging place from what I have seen in my time lurking around the site. 

I am looking forward to getting to know the community here and hopefully I can contribute as well as learn.