I have been doing real estate as a retirement strategy off and on for about 20 years on a very small scale.

Thomas Cooper,Just my opinion, but in our area, multi-family properties provide a better economy of scale vice SFHs.

Even if your unit is amazing quality renters might not want to be there because of the other buildings or other landlords are dropping rent fast rather than updating the buildings.Pro for bigger complexYou can scale the business effectively.You can control the whole look and feel of the development and tenant base and not be as affected by outside forces with your investment.If you by a large enough size you can employ a full time property manager and maintenance person so you can truly be hands off and passive.Cons- Harder to sell - I disagree with this as typically house investors or little duplex etc. is a different buyer base than a larger apartment building.For example I have a large buyer base of multifamily buildings because that is what I focus on.

Hi Paul and welcome to Bigger Pockets.I know the food industry well and have been a restaurant owner in the past so understand all that is involved.I would only buy a restaurant again where the size and scale had an infrastructure in place that does not require an owner operator situation.

Now we're looking at scaling it to something much bigger.

Tim C.Silver Bay's Investor Presentation is certainly an interesting read, thank you for posting it.Silver Bay will be a fascinating case study to determine if the single family rental business model can be profitable on a massive nationwide scale.

We also started buying again in 2008, although on a much smaller scale.

If you're structuring deals of this nature, or even on smaller scale but have a good return, I'd love to read your stories and find out the steps you've taken throughout your investing career to master the art of short sales.

Once you start to scale up and create real equity, you'll need to have a good attorney and accountant in your team.

Seems like an area that we could drill down in and get some real nuggets to leverage assets.Where would CF be on a scale of difficulty?