Buy & Hold Condo’s/Townhomes .VS. Single Family’s That Is The Que

[Dustin D.]

Hello Everyone,

We are new to investing and have been educating ourselves, following our market, running local deals, networking and really diving into to learn all about REI and our market for the past few months and running into trouble/road blocks and looking for some advice.

From a Buy & Hold standpoint our market is extremely competitive even an hour to 2 hours outside our immediate location. I’m seeing after running potential deals for a few months that Condo’s/Townhomes are more readily available a bit cheaper and in some cases may actually cash flow or break even.

The problem that I’m running into is in our market that rents just don’t seem to be high enough to cash flow and in most cases hard to actually break even for what I’m looking for (Cash Flow $150-200 after expenses Ie cap ex, vacancy, management ect..).

For instance $300,000 3br, 2.5ba single family homes are renting for around $1,850-$2,200 a month and $280,000 3br, 2.5ba Condos/Townhomes are renting the same. When running the numbers if I’m doing my calculations correct factoring in all expenses as well as accounting for vacancy, cap ex, management ect.. Even buying at %20 below market value its hard to cash flow or break even on properties.

Am I doing something wrong? Should I be looking further out of my area? Are my calculations messed up? Should I even be considering Condo’s/Townhomes? Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time in advance have a wonderful day.