Retirement accounts like 401ks take decades to build and are subject to the volatility of the stock market.

As a general rule and given past experience, I always prefer to buy SFR's vs. condo's, but like Justin noted, condos can turn out to be great investments.My reasons for not liking condos as investments: 1/ more volatile than SFR market (i.e. look at how condo's in the city of SF are doing right now vs.

If I were to guess, I would say that we probably have 8 move outs and 16 move ins per month on average....roughly one move in/out per workday....this varies considerably where I live as we are most volatile from April to June and Sept. to Nov....Winter is slower (in and out) as is mid summer (vacationers?)

Townhouses are likely to be a lot more price volatile if and when the real estate market ever softens up.   

REITS can be more highly volatile where they have super strong years and really negative years for returns.An UPREIT is another tool in the toolbelt of investing.

Albuquerque tends to be a stable market with very little volatility and steadily gains value at about 3.5% per year, on average.