Not sure where to focus

[Saugat Ghimire]

Hi everyone,

I am new to real estate investing. I just bought my first property - a triplex - and will be closing on April 1st. I will be living on one of the units and doing short term rentals from the other 2 units (my girlfriend will be managing the short term rentals for me).

I am excited for my next purchase, but have no idea what it should be.

Since my first property is an AirBnb, I was thinking that maybe I should buy a small apartment building (long term rental) as my next property to have a consistent cashflow. I've been reading "The Multifamily Millionaire" and am a big fan of "The Stack". I am looking for a long-distance investment since small apartment buildings are too expensive in Seattle. However I wonder if getting into a 6-12 unit apartment building is too big of a jump. I don't have any experience with long-distance investments.

As I am just starting my real estate investing journey, I'm also wondering if I should bias towards cash flow. I started looking into mobile home parks and learned that they tend to cash flow very well (if I buy a park where the homes are owned by the folks living in them). It all sounds really nice - but is it really that easy? Would you recommend that I start with these to generate more cash short term that I can then use to go into multi-family properties?

Lastly, I do want to purchase more short-term rentals in the future. My girlfriend and I travel a lot, and owing several vacation properties that we can visit every once in a while is very appealing to us. If this is what we eventually want, should we just start off with several short term rentals? My only concern with this is that the income tends to fluctuate with seasons, and if we end up in another COVID situation, it could really hurt our business.

I feel like I am all over the place - all these options sound very exciting but would love your input. Brandon Turner writes in his book, "it is more important THAT you make a decision, rather than WHAT the decision is" (I may have misquoted) - so I think I could succeed with any of these approaches. Regardless, I'm still struggling to decide.

Thanks in advance, and looking forward to your advice.

[Ben Scott]

Congrats on the deal closing on April 1. I'd get that deal closed and stabilized before you look for the next shiny object. You'll learn a TON in the first six weeks about managing tenant expectations, especially on the STR. I tend to lean towards caution and not jumping feet first into a new venture, but I'd let this first deal simmer before you decide on Phase 2.