Make Money Investing in Texas Real Estate

Foreign and domestic investors alike are throwing their hat into the Texas property arena. In the current state of the economy, it may very well be the safest and most profitable investment in the United States.

Lets take a quick look at the market in Houston right now...

Last May marked the 12th consecutive month of positive sales and growth in the Houston real estate market. The sales of single-family homes rose 29% since May of last year with and 8.5% increase in average sales price. Strong sales on homes from $250,000 and up pushed the average housing price up to historic levels.

For potential investors, probably the most important statistic is month end pending sales, which totaled 4,476, up 10.5% since last May. This suggests a further increase in sales for the upcoming months. Foreclosed sales totaled 7,327 in May, an increase of over 24% from that of last year. The large volume of sales has caused the price of these foreclosed homes to rise 4.1% to over $80,000 per home.

All this positive news may come as a surprise to many people. It is true, buyers and sellers alike are experiencing a national market filled with over-appreciated homes and a shortage of home-buyers. Texas seems to be the anomaly. Why?

"Texas Real Estate defies US property market" says Texas Real Estate Magazine.

Texas has an impressive 11.5% estimated profit increase according to the ROI. Of course, profit increase doesn't mean much to investors who have trouble finding tenants, such as in areas with high unemployment like California and Detroit. It's a good thing that Houston is a job creating machine that expects to have created more than 810,000 new jobs by the end of 2012.

Is Houston good for foreign investors?

In the past year, Texas has accounted for 10% of all international sales by foreign investors, coming in 3rd behind Florida (26%) and California (16%). There are a couple of reasons why foreign investors have suddenly turned their eyes toward the Lone Star. First, Texas has the single most self-sustaining economy in the country, experiencing stable growth on all levels. Second, Texas is one of the easiest states for foreign investors to set up an LLC.

Homes are going fast with an 18.1% decline in available listings over the past year. Also, the number of available single family homes has reached its lowest point in the past 5 years. The market is in a position where the sooner you act, the more returns you're likely to earn.

Choosing The Type Real Estate To Invest In

Quite a number of people have discovered that one of the best investments anyone can ever make is a real estate investment. This is because the property that you invest in will, in most cases, appreciate in value. Most of the commodities that are manufactured or produced these days usually depreciate in value. For example, once you purchase a car and drive for only 1 mile, the value of that car has depreciated. However, when it comes to purchasing a building, it increases in value as time goes by.

When you want to invest in a certain type of real estate, you may need to consider some things. Here are some pointers that may help you when you want to choose a particular type of real estate investment:

The Population - The people who are found in a certain area become a great determining factor of the type of building you can provide. For example, if the area you have purchased land has universities or schools, it would only be logical to provide hostels or apartment blocks where the students can reside. If you have purchase land in the suburbs, then you should invest in proper family houses with 3 or 4 bedrooms.

Social Amenities - In this case, social amenities refers to things such as medical facilities, retail stores, game arcades, educational facilities etc. If the place you have land doesn't have any of these facilities but the population is quite large, then you may want to develop a shopping and office complex where you can incorporate some of these social amenities. As you may be aware, students like to shop and go to the video games arcade. Thus, having such a complex would be advantageous. You would save people money by bringing such services closer to them instead of having them drive a few miles away to get to a town.

Infrastructure - The availability of roads, telecommunication and even internet services can determines which type of building you can construct. Building an office or shopping complex where infrastructure is not available would not be a wise idea. The only time you can invest in such a complex is when you are sure that the local authority will be providing infrastructure sometime in the future. If this happens, the value of your building will increase drastically.