Real Estate Investor · Erie, PA · Member since 2008 · 38 posts · 4 votes
The book "Investing in Duplexes, Triplexes, and Quads" by Larry B. Loftis is a great book for beginners. The book seems to lay out a pretty basic plan of investing in rental property while making it easy to understand. I am very new to real estate investing so take this recommendation as you will, but if you are getting started I would definitely recommend it. The only complaint I have about the books is that he makes a lot of things sound very easy... I think this is common in these types of books. I would give the book 8 out of 10.
I've read that book too and thought it was pretty good. Since most books are written with 20-20 hindsight, some authors do tend to over simplify things. I only own 1 duplex. The rest of my properties are all single family. I think the major pros of multi-unit are economies of scale...only 1 roof to replace, etc. You also have income coming in even if a unit is unoccupied. As the building becomes larger, they also usually end up with even better cash flow, since the cost per unit isn't usually linear, so you'd pay less, sometimes much less for an 8 unit building than what you'd pay for 8 single units. Of course your expenses would be higher as well. I'd eventually like to start acquiring more and larger multi's. Some potential drawbacks are that larger buildings may need to be registered and / or inspected by the state. In NJ, you get what's called a Department of Community Affairs green card for apartment buildings. You also can sometimes have 1 tenant affect the quality of life for the rest of them and may need to put on your referee hat.
Real Estate Investor · Vancouver, WA · Member since 2008 · 387 posts · 8 votes
18y
I also definitely recommend this book. It is the sole reason for me knowing that my future strategy is going to be to buy as many quads as possible before moving on to apartment buildings.
Lender · Phoenix, AZ · Member since 2008 · 351 posts · 40 votes
18y
Interesting stuff guys. I will be looking into these books for sure in the future. I recently just posted a thread about why everyone has SFH when it seems like Multis would be the way to go. I haven't invested yet though so I can;t say I have experience.