Investing Strategy: 5+ apartment complex vs several 4-units>

[Scott Schaecher]

Hi everyone! This is officially my first post to Bigger Pockets, but hoping to become a more regular participant. I've been listening to the Podcasts and reading blogs for several months now, and am hooked. Wanting to start getting serious on acquiring more REI's.

I do own 1 rental single fam here in St. Louis (~5 years) that I manage myself, and also have (very hands off) investments in several apartment complexes in FL - so not completely new to the world of REI. But would still consider myself somewhat of N00B if that makes sense. While my SF cash flows positive, I didn't know about the world of BP when I acquired it so frankly thought it was a decent deal until I started hearing all of your success stories on BP and now come to realize I could probably have done better :)

I want to get my head wrapped around multi-family strategies. While I own part of several large apartment complexes in FL, I'm a non-active investor - meaning someone else found the deal, I wrote checks for my buy in, and receive my returns. Now that I've had a taste of it, I'd like to invest some more money and get more active in the multi-fam space.

So to start my first post off with a high level, simple question - thoughts on smaller apartment complexes vs multiple 2-4 multi-fam properties? I have enough to go after either a 10-20 unit complex, or maybe 3-4 4-unit multi fams. I would be pursuing financing in either situation (BP users make it pretty clear that OPM is a great thing, right?) and understand the commercial loans are more complex... so should I spend my time digging in to find a larger complex? Or focus on the smaller multi-fams? I feel like I need to decide on a strategy to focus my time and efforts wisely, as opposed to chasing both strategies half heartedly.

Any thoughts or tips are appreciated!