REIT vs Investing in SFH Rental Properties

[Seung Oh]

Hi everyone, 

I am new here and hoping to learn how to invest in real estate. There's a lot of blogs out there promoting REIT or things like Fundrise but I am a bit skeptical and I am leaning towards investing in single family homes and renting them out in the midwest or the south. Can someone explain to me the benefits of investing in single family homes?

Let's say REIT is giving me return of 10 percent annually... can a rental property beat that? What are the pros and cons? What are the tax benefits of owning a rental property versus investing in REIT.

Basically I want to see if I invest $100,000 in REIT versus rental properties, which option would put me ahead?

[Alina Trigub]

@Seung Oh

A ton of great advice here already. The important things are to:

1) Always think "diversification" to minimize the impacts.

2) Always keep in mind the tax hit. Depending on your tax bracket, you could be paying as much as 37% in taxes on your X% interest from REIT as it is considered ordinary income.

3) While keeping nu 2 above in mind, you can always invest in REITs (or syndications) via tax-deferred or tax-free accounts (example, is IRA) which will either allow you to hopefully lower or remove in some cases your tax burden.

Here're additional articles to guide you:  

https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/10850/84063-private-equity-meets-stock-market

https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/10850/87253-should-i-scale-my-investment-from-single-family-homes-to-multifamily

https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/10850/85836-should-i-buy-a-turn-key-property-or-invest-in-a-syndication