Blog

Going green is good for the environment and good for the pocketbook. In older homes that are designed poorly with lots of air leakage and inferior insulation as much as 40% of the energy used to heat and cool the home is wasted. If your monthly energy bill is $300, you may be throwing away […]

One of the greatest tax breaks in America is the ability to own income-producing property and deduct the mortgage payments as well as depreciation to offset the income and reduce income taxes. This is why real estate still is one of the best investments. Imagine if you could depreciate stock, which is not allowed. Imagine […]

Buying your first home is a major milestone in a person’s life. It means you have achieved a big part of the American Dream. It is even a better feeling when you buy your first investment property. When you are capable of making an investment in a property, other than your home, you are on […]

Are you kidding me? Or is this just a load of bull pucky? There is no way that in these hard times with bank CD interest rates near 1% that any government agency of Texas or otherwise will guarantee an annual return on real estate that equals 25% per year. That must be impossible right? […]

These are two sides of a coin that give different opportunities in the home rental market in Houston. We previously discussed rent-to-own opportunities for those that have bad credit in another post. We also discussed the possibilities of buying single-family homes for the purposes of using them as rental properties. This post goes into much […]

The one thing most people lack besides having enough money to build their “dream home” is the time and patience necessary to achieve it. Construction of a custom dream home is a very messy process and it looks terrible even right before the final finishing touches are made that make it look spectacular. There is […]

Not everyone is aware that the ownership of property rights does not necessarily convey the ownership of all rights associated with a particular piece of property as covered in another blog post, which we go into more detail here. There are additional rights that can be included or excluded from the sale of a property. […]

About twelve years ago, during 2005, before the real estate market collapsed, we were offered thousands of acres of land in Texas for US$50 per acre. We wanted to buy it, simply because it was the cheapest land in Texas. We negotiated the price down to US$15 per acre and started to put the deal […]

Imagine you are a very intelligent person. You are NOT part of the commute crowd who needlessly drive (sometimes more than one hour each day each way) to sit in a cubicle in some company and work in front of a computer all day, when you know you can much more easily do this from […]

When a person buys a property they usually get the land and any improvements made on the land. However, they do not automatically get all the rights for the land, including what is below and above the surface level of the land unless they also acquire all the “rights” associated with the land. The rights […]