Why 3/2?

[Scott Thompson]

As I'm doing my research, I see that 3/2 is kind of the bread-and-butter SFR. That's what I've been looking for as my first property, but just got to thinking today...I don't really know why I'm looking at 3/2 specifically. Why not 4/2? Or some other combination? I'm considering investing in something that I don't fully understand. Help me understand it BP!

Note that I've done a fair amount of reading on the difference between multi-family and SFR and understand that pretty well. But now that I've narrowed my target to SFR, I want understand why the 3/2 sub-category, so to speak, is the most popular as opposed to other configurations.

[Wendell De Guzman]

2/1 is not good as a rental because it tends to attract short-term tenants.

3/2 is good because it attracts long term tenants and generally, it's also a good re-sale property.

4/2 is primarily re-sale and not necessarily cheap enough as a rental.

Having said this, the above is a generalization and there are exceptions in every market.