Need help in finalizing a City in Texas for BRRR

[Akshay Bhaskaran]

Hello BP Members,

I'm an investor based out of Austin, TX having a couple of properties in Georgia. I'd like to get started with my first BRRR deal, and since I have zero-to-no experience with BRRR, I'd like to do it near my home so I can learn and fail fast. My strategy is Single-family long-term rentals.

I started researching various neighboring cities near Austin, and have shortlisted to these 5:
1. San Marcos
2. San Antonio
3. New Braunfels
4. Temple
5. Killeen

To focus down on one particular city, I've been collecting various data points about each of the city like:
1. Median Sales Price
2. Year-over-year growth (or change)
3. Median Days on the Market
4. Sale-to-list price
5. Redfin's competitive score
6. Population growth %
7. Owner occupied %
8. Renter occupied %
9. Median rent
10. Crime Index
11. Unemployment rate
12. Per capita

Based on my initial research, "New Braunfels" seems to be the winner in most of the categories. But, I'm still confused because the other cities looks good to:

1. Temple: Has an army base there, sale-to-list price is good. Meta is building a datacenter here.
2. Killeen: Median DOM is very low, Redfin score says its very competitive. 
3. San Marcos: Employment rate and renter occupied % is very good, they have the outlet mall, and couple of attractions too

I'm not sure if I should consider any more data points to fix on a city. It would be great if you can throw all your thoughts, comments, feedback etc. :) 

[Jennifer C.]

Just my two cents, but with the university, I think you would have lots of renters with San Marcos… though people also like living in NB and there are good schools.