I knew a chemistry professor there at A&M who had a lot of money from various chemical patents he had, a chunk of which he poured into real-estate in the local area, and then made gobs more money off that. One of the last deals he had going when I was working there was he sold some land he owned to Walmart for a new WM Superstore, which I understand they paid him an arm and a leg for.
He and some others around there told me I should look at buying some property because their projections were the CS area was set to expand by X amount over the next X years (I can't remember any hard numbers now) and any real-estate investment would probably be a good one.
I made good money for a guy in his mid-20's, but I wasn't rolling in it. Acreage was out of my range for somewhere I wasn't intending to live, at least I thought so. I wasn't willing to take on a giant loan on the chance I could do something to develop a tract. I knew nothing about that world, even though he said he's be happy to help me. I could never have devoted much time to it, my work hours were pretty rigorous. I could've tried to get in on a home and turn it into rental property, but I never bit that bullet because my job was such that I could've been out of that area in an unforeseen instant. Which, eventually, I was. And I've always been of the opinion that you mostly don't want to have rental property far from where you are. I had a bad go-round with that with a house I left in Louisiana when I moved to Austin, and that was a fiasco-and-a-half.
But, I bet they were right.....I bet anything bought in 2005 in CS would be highly increased in value these days.
