Padre Island is a good place for investors who are betting on appreciation of the property to make them money in the long run. Due to taxes and storm insurance rates, it is almost impossible for investors to depend on long-term (6-12 mo.) rentals to provide positive cash flow. If you are going to use the property yourself for less than a 3 month period, you may be able to depend on one long-term rental per year to help you pay for your vacation home, but don't expect that one rental to pay all your annual costs.

Thu May 8 2008, 20:02

As a Realtor and owner of investment property here in Corpus I have to say that the rental market here is very strong. Our major employers are the Military and Oil. Naval Air Station Corpus Christi is the home of one of the Navy's flight schools which means that there are a constant source of students looking for housing anywhere from 6 months to a year long. In addition we have Texas A&M Corpus Christi which is a growing university and also produces an extra sub set of people looking to rent. My advice to you would to purchase a home on North Padre Island. A lot of the student aviators and other military members prefer to rent on the island, it's a quick, 10 minute commute to base and it's close to the water (intracoastal on one side and Gulf on the other). You can email me any other questions, or I can send you properties that would be a good match.

Mon Jan 14 2008, 14:18

I personally don't like buying above the average home price for rental properties. For investment properties, I would guess in Corpus that you would want to stay about the $100,000-$120,000 range to be able to keep it rented consistantly and be in the affordability range of a larger percentage of renters. If you will be strapped during the vacancies I think this is not a good strategy. I think you need to comfortably ride out the storms.

Mon Jan 14 2008, 10:23