The Washington Post - Why single family homes are better

[Marcella Hoard]

The Washington Post recently published an article outlining four reasons why single family home investments are better than apartment complexes. They are summarized below as more favorable financing, easier to sell, more properties available, and a safer investment.

1. More favorable financing - There are more favorable financing options available for a single-family house than an apartment building. You can also typically get lower down payments. 

2. Easier to sell - If you have a portfolio of single-family homes, you can sell them as a package or individually. You can market them to commercial investors or retail buyers. 

3. More properties to choose from - There are more single-family houses than apartment buildings and with a little work you can find great bargains.

4. Safer investing - In order to build wealth within your means, you need some wiggle room in the property. You’re always in a tenuous spot when there is no daylight between what you’ve put into a property and what you can sell it for.
Which do you consider to be a safer investment - SFH investing or multi-family investing?

Why single-family houses make better investments than apartment buildings - The Washington Post

[Stephanie P.]

@Marcella Hoard

The Post, as usual, is wrong.

There is no bigger loss for investors than vacancy loss.  If you have multiple tenants, your vacancy loss is significantly diminished offsetting any bump to the rate or a financing differential. The law of supply and demand would contradict single family properties are  "easier to sell".  You can't keep multi family properties on the market for more than a minute and investors are renovating their properties to create more multi family properties.  It's pretty rare to see a multi family property converted to a single family right?

There is no safer investment for a young couple starting off than an ADU or a 2-4 unit property where the tenants pay the mortgage. House hacking is alive and well in America today.

I'll take a multi family investor property all day long over a single family.

Stephanie