(There may be longer fixed-rate products, I'm just not aware of them yet.)One advantage of 5-units and up, is that the appraisal will place more weight on the Income Approach.  

Some of us are heavily weighted in real estate, and we are extremely happy with owning this income-producing asset class.  

I have FINRA series licenses, all of the information you need to pass the tests to obtain those licenses is available for free on the internet, but that in no way means I could have passed without paying for an expert service telling me what to study and how it was weighted.

I am weighted more towards debt and preferred equity deals.So far, only one investment is not performing, and in that situation, it is some weird internal situation (too many cooks at the sponsor) and from what I can tell, not a problem with the actual property.These investments were a conscious decision for me to allocate away from my stock portfolio and after I made the first couple of investments, I decided that the only way for this to make a lot of sense was to get a big portfolio fast in different cities across the country.

So everything is weighted and calculated whether that loan is a good fit or not with your property or properties.   

How much weight/consideration should go into it when making a purchase.

The term "high yield" is much like "Lose Weight Today" how much depends on the eye of the beholder.  

Now that is some serious weight.

I'm currently trying to learn more about the advantages also... hopefully someone with some experience with this will weight in here.Terry

good property management is worth their weight in gold.