Hi all, my name is Nick and I'm an aspiring real estate investor from Houston, TX.

I've been interested in real estate investing for most of my life as I watched my parents own and operate a duplex in my hometown that worked out very well for them. After moving from the midwest to California after college, I always kept my eye on real estate but could never find a deal that made sense in SoCal. 

One thing that opened my eyes to all of the costs of real estate was the NYT Rent vs. Buy calculator. In SoCal, it was clearly better for me to rent, especially when getting a roommate to split costs. I stocked away any additional money I "saved" by renting with a roommate vs. buying and put it in the notional bucket of "house down payment" for later down the line.

A little more than a year ago, I moved to Houston knowing almost nothing about the city. I decided to rent when I moved here to get a feel for the city before buying anything. Now that I live in a market with some workable deals and have a better feel for the city, I feel like I'm ready to take the plunge. 

Areas that most interest me are: buy and hold cash flow rentals (SFR or Multi), house hacking, and BRRRR

I'm currently looking at SFRs in suburbs outside the city (possibly Clear Lake, Friendswood, Pearland, Spring, Katy, etc) and potentially multi family properties in the Greater East End, though those seem harder to come.

Looking forward to networking with the BP community and learning as much as I can along the way.

Welcome to Houston and to the forum Nick.

@Nick S. welcome!

Just a quick comment, Spring to Friendswood, and Katy to Clearlake, is a pretty big area. Unless you want to drive yourself crazy, I would narrow that down a little. Even if you have a property manager, you are going to want to drive by now and then to make sure everything is doing well. This is the only real benefit I see when investing locally.

If you are going to manage, then I would say somewhere within 30min drive of your house. Just my 2-cents.

All the areas you listed have some deals that will work and are nice areas to have rentals. 

Plus 1 on that Nick.  People just don't comprehend how big the Houston metro area is.  It is a mere 480 square miles, Houston is actually the second largest city by area in the US.  I  have kept my properties within a 30 minute drive from my home. Since I live in Friendswood, I only invest in the Suburban South East. My properties all are experiencing stellar performance.  I  am not seeing the negatives my colleges are to the north and west. 

Randy

@Michael Delpier Thanks for the reality check, that's a great point. Realistically, I don't think I would buy properties on opposite ends of the city, because as you said those are just too far away from each other. The areas I listed gives a flavor for the type of neighborhood I'm looking at: a solid B type SFR in a nice neighborhood with good schools.

I currently live near downtown, so any of the suburbs are approximately the same distance away. 

The idea is to keep exploring some of those areas and then focus my efforts on one area once I decide. 

@Nick S.

Welcome to the BP family! You came to the right place to learn all about real estate investing! Here are some recommendations for you:

Find and connect with other BP members that are in your area: http://www.biggerpockets.com/meet
Set up keyword alerts to be notified of the topics that interest you: http://www.biggerpockets.com/alerts
Read Beginner’s Guide: http://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investing
Check out BP Podcasts: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/category/podcast/

Wishing you the best!

@Nick S.

Welcome to Bigger Pockets. Make sure to check out all of the informative podcasts.

Glad to hear your properties are doing well in the south east, @Randall Jacobs

Now I'm curious, what kind of negatives are the people in the north and west experiencing in the current market?

Thanks @Mark Nolan ! I've listened to about 20 of the podcasts so far and working through the rest. Makes the commute to and from work much more entertaining!

@Nick S.

Welcome to BP! You have picked a great place to learn about real estate investing and to network with others interesting in real estate. I am in the Houston market also and it's nice to see others in the area getting involved in RE investing. Since you're interested in rentals, you might want to check out The Guide to Buying a Rental Property (https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/02/22/buying-rental-property/) and the Guide to screening tenants

(https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/01/27/tenant-screening/)

Welcome to Houston Nick! I have seen deals over the past months in all of the areas you initially listed.  My advice would to be to just start analyzing deals like crazy.  There are some great tools on this website to make that process very quick.

check out:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investme...

Good Luck to you fellow Nick!