SFR vs Duplex or 4 Plex

[Albert Fiorillo]

Hello Everyone,

I am a newbie starting out in Real Estate Investing. At first i was primarily looking into SFR units to buy and hold for the long term with a minimal amount of net cash flow per month per unit. Are there pros and cons to having a duplex or 4 plex vs a SFR?

from what i gather the pros would be the following:
increased monthly rental income (as you have more units)
Vacancy risk is spread out more.

cons:
Duplex and 4 plex may not apperciate as highly as SFR and could be harder to sell in the long run. But this may not be an issue for me as my strategy is to buy an hold for a long time.

Any advice/comments would be great.

thanks
Al

[Lee G.]

You hit it on the head. I've shied away from SFRs because of the risk piece of it. I had to more or less gut a 4 plex I own and the tenants in the other units paid my mortgage while the other two were uninhabitable. The other thing you perhaps aren't addressing is scale. The more units you have together, the easier it is to address issues. Four units under ONE roof is better than FOUR roofs and FOUR units. And lastly, buy based on numbers... Too many people buy buildings because they are pretty but then end up loosing their butts because they don't know even the most basic real estate math.

LMG