Middle Management · Greensboro, NC · Member since 2015 · 2 posts · 0 votes
Hello all, my name is Steve. My wife and I are newbies to real estate investing. Our goal is to start out with one property and work our way up to have 10-15 Rental properties. We are currently trying to gain as much knowledge in real estate investing as possible before we pull the trigger on our first investment. Our goal is to purchase our first property in 2016. Our question is; should we start with a single family home or a duplex? We would like to build our portfolio with both.
We being new to this business, any advice or information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
Computer Programmer · Austin, TX · Member since 2015 · 15 posts · 2 votes
10y
Steven,
Odd answer but I would say both.
My first house I lived in was a property with two dwellings on it, which were not connected (a.k.a an in-law unit). I was able to live in one while renting the other. If you're trying to maximize your monthly cash intake (after mortgage and other expense are paid out) then often times having multiple units on a single property yields more cash.
Their are drawbacks of course. Usually duplexes are located near or around other duplexes and multi-unit dwellings. So appreciation of the asset might suffer as a result of the condition of the other homes in the vicinity. Personally, I prefer to find properties with 2 units embedded in neighborhoods with single family homes so that you have a stability of the surrounding homes helping to maintain (and hopefully increase) your equity.
There are some great resources on the site if you haven't already explored them.