All Forum Posts by: Cary O.

Anything updated nicely in the Grapevine area will go quickly in this market. House looks great! Congrats on your successful long-term flip @Rocky V.! 

Have you read "The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner" by David Bach? The premise of his book is that anyone can reach seven figures through real estate primarily because of appreciation and time IN real estate ownership. 

Welcome to Bigger Pockets @Erik Mogan - way to take the first step on your real estate investing journey. Spent some time in Lexington before moving to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Best of luck to you! 

"You will never do anything in the world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor." - Aristotle

Hi @Corey Jahn - welcome to the DFW metroplex! The Southlake/Grapevine area is a beautiful place to live, but the price point varies noticeably from Southlake to Grapevine. You will find more affordable properties in Grapevine than in Southlake, where median home prices are over $500K and generally larger than 3000 sqft. 

As far as areas of growth, the DFW metroplex continues to draw several businesses and continued development, which means population growth is expected to continue for the next few years at least. The North Fort Worth /Alliance/ Keller areas in Tarrant county and Frisco, The Colony, McKinney, Allen areas near Legacy West development in Collin County are expected to have significant growth for those reasons. 

Home prices in DFW have risen over 50% in the past 5 years. In this article from Forbes, Dallas was the top city to invest in housing with an expected continued 30% increase in price by 2020 for the following reasons: 

1) 6.2% three-year population growth (2012-2015)

2) 3.9% job gains in 2016

3) 9-10% annual home price gains

link to the article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2017/01/...

For flippers, you may find it challenging to find margins of 30%, but the rapid increase in home values has helped with the lower initial purchase margins with flippers selling at a premium. 

Many factors will influence the desirability and ease of marketing your properties. The neighborhood, the condition of the property, the demand for rentals in that area, competition from other available rentals, rent price, school district (if they have children), the time of year, as well as the time of the month that you list. I've heard that the last week of the month is the best time to list and has the most activity. The middle of the month is the slowest. Hopefully you won't have to wait long this time of year!

Welcome to the BP community @William Carr. Below are a few of the many great resources on Bigger Pockets that you may want to check out if you have not already done so: 

1) Read "The Bigger Pockets Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing"

2) Subscribe to the podcasts 

3) Sign up for the weekly webinars 

4) Forums - read and participate in the discussions

5) Attend local meet ups to network 

All the best to you as you get started in real estate investing!

Hearing your story @Jhansi B. just confirms that we prefer to invest in higher quality SFRs that tend to be low maintenance and also attract low maintenance tenants. We rarely receive a call/text/email from our tenants as most are highly screened prior to signing a lease. Most of our applicants have professional jobs and have treated our time with respect, as we also try our best to be respectful of them with very few onsite visits unless required or requested. We've never had an issue with late rent payments ("knock on wood"). 

@Kenneth Kussman - we are seeing the same thing in the North Tarrant area for any decent properties in the $150-$250K range. They are usually listed with "will accept offers until ______ date/time". Most continue to have offers received (often multiple offers) within same day of listing. 

@Jason Griffith - While we continue to actively look for additional properties, we are also hoping and expecting the market to cool down this fall/winter for better investment opportunities. Searching the comps for the past year, the DOM for listings in that price range were significantly higher in the fall/winter.  Given the huge Legacy West development and businesses / new jobs being added, we've been starting to look up in the Colony, Frisco, McKinney, Allen, and Carrollton areas as well. 

We took the plunge when we purchased our current home, and had to decide if we were going to sell our previous home or rent it out. We had not found Bigger Pockets at that time, and had no prior experience with investment property. Thankfully, we have a longstanding relationship with our realtor who also has rental properties, and learned a lot from her as well as a few friends who had invested in rentals. We decided to rent the house due to the equity and appreciation in the previous house, and haven't looked back since as we have enjoyed great cash flows as well. We have been steadily learning along the way, and are glad to have found the resources on Bigger Pockets as we learn new things every time we get on the site as well as the podcasts. We are so glad that point in our life gave us the push needed to start our real estate investment journey. 

HI  @Ryan Bourgeois - you may want to check out UTA (in Arlington) - it appears that they have an online program to meet pre-license requirements except for the Real Estate Finance course as the Texas Real Estate Commission has made content changes to that course. UTA also has an online prep course available help you prepare for the license exam. Best of luck on your journey!