Scaling single family homes in SW Florida

[Caleb Horne]

Hey everyone.

I own 4 single family homes, looking to scale up. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I’m extremely passionate about buying real estate.

[Andrea Proeber]

I disagree. I may be new to BP but I am not new to residential real estate investing and property management. It really depends on the market you are in. While I have worked with investors buying multi family and SFH many, many times over, for our market here in Ocala, buying ugly SFH's fixing them up and renting them out is the biggest money maker. Our town/county is pretty strict on multi family owners but much less ridiculous on the sfh landlords.

Everything seems to be much more expensive for multi family units as opposed to multi family.

Also, the turnover and vacancy ratio is way higher in multi family whereas you could have the same tenant for years and years with a sfh.

In a down market, selling off one sfh is fairly easy, try selling an apartment complex when nobody has cash. It's a painful experience. 

Best advice from my late grandma, a real estate broker from Ft Myers for decades: "don't put all your eggs in one basket."

Get some ugly sfh fix them up, then sell off the house with the lowest ROI using a 1031 exchange and buy two more ugly homes...wash/rinse/repeat.

But look at your market, what is great advice in one area is terrible advice in another.

Have fun!