Opinions on SFH vs Multi-family?

[Jack T.]

I started recently down the real estate path, prior to discovering BP, but now that I've found it, I'm really impressed with the information here! I would love opinions from other investors.

At the start of this year I set in motion the purchase of 2 single family homes and a duplex in my wife's self-directed IRA, which I set up for real estate purchases. Because of the IRA rules, the properties were purchased with all cash and the return on each is about 7%. Average cost of these properties is about $140,000 each (a bit more for the duplex). We're not exactly spring chickens, so our assets are reflective of many years of stock market returns.

I also bought an investment house (not in an IRA) for myself with 25% down ($33,000) and the NOI is about 20% and cash-on-cash return is about 15%. Amazing what borrowed money does for a return...

My next plan is to liquidate a large asset (farmland) with a very low cap rate. I've assumed that a large multi-family property is the thing that would make the most sense, but I'm looking at my numbers above, especially the return with borrowed money and wondering if I should continue with the SFH route. The downside is the large number of properties I'd have to acquire, but really, since I use a property manager, I'm not sure how much the number of houses matters. I'm in the S.F. Bay Area, but I've invested in Nashville, and so far it has been really easy. They've all been MLS properties. Am I missing something? I wouldn't think that apartment returns could be much better and I don't really know much about how to find them. I'm willing to go that route - I'm just wondering aloud here. Opinions?