I had a question come in from a long-lost relative of mine (well, long lost to me anyway).  "Will Your Real Estate Strategy Work in a Higher Priced Market like Dallas?"

Russell Cronwell was the first president of Temple University.  He is know for his "Acres of Diamonds" speach he delivered some 6,000 times. 

The main point of the speach is that you don’t need to go to some other location to find opportunity.  Opportunities abound all around us every single day.  The problems is that sometimes it’s just really hard to see those opportunities. 

I’ll give you a perfect example.  There is a neighborhood in my city that has a really bad reputation as a war zone. 

For years I resisted buying any properties from this area because I was so afraid of owning anything and getting in over my head.  I was afraid of what it would be like managing properties in this area. 

My first experience in this area was buy houses to do wholesale flips.   I ended up keeping two of the houses because I couldn’t find a buyer.  These were my first (and accidental) rentals in this neighborhood.    

You know what I found out?  Managing these properties wasn’t too much different than managing rental houses in other parts of the city.  

The real break through was recently getting a great deal on a package of four properties on this area.  My first instinct was flip them for a quick buck.  

But after I got over that – I couldn’t find a buyer for these because of the same other investors were having that I had – I got busy with rehabbing the first one.  

I was blown away by the level of demand for the property.  What I ended up with was a property that I had less than $20,000 invested in total that would rent easily for $500 per month.  Perhaps more if I were to push it.  

So will these types of investment strategies work in another market that is higher priced than the Oklahoma City market? 

Does the pope sleep at night?  

Of course you can make a rental strategy work.  You can make a strategy to flip properties work.  I don’t have room to go into the numbers, but that where you need to start.  

What are the numbers for your market?  What are your buy prices, and how much rent will these properties produce for you?