My Strategy From Here

A lot of people who have been reading my blog have been asking why I’m focusing so much on single family houses recently when my plan was originally to focus on apartment investing. It’s a good question, and I can understand why those following this blog would be confused…I haven’t really clarified my plans in a while.

While I still love the idea of apartment investing, and I have little doubt that my long-term focus will be multi-unit properties and other commercial ventures, I’ve come to realize a couple of things recently:

1. Breaking into the apartment market here in Atlanta is going to take time. There are some big-time investors with a lot of experience, capital, and relationships, and as much as I’d like to just jump right in, it’s going to require some work to meet the right people, make the right connections, and start getting involved in the “investor scene” with the multi-unit investors. I’m certainly not giving up, I’m just being realistic that it’s something I’m going to have to work on over time (and I am!)
2. I’m starting to see trends that indicate that the apartment market is slowing around here. Vacancies are up in the past quarter for the first time in several years (mostly due to all the single family homes now on the market as rentals), and rent growth has slowed to almost nothing. I have a feeling the apartment market is going to follow the single housing market in a year or two, and the best deals are ahead of us
3. This is perhaps the best single family housing market in 50 years, and all the financial projections I’ve done indicate that it’s possible to make as much — if not more — in single family houses over the next couple years than in apartments
4. While apartments are my long-term goal and I imagine that’s what I’ll be investing in 5 years from now, the single family market is much less risky, and considering both are offering great returns today, I’d rather focus on the less risky business model

So, given the above, I’m starting to change my main focus from apartments to single family houses. As I’ve mentioned in this blog, I’ve started making offers on properties, have been talking to banks about financing, and have created a new business plan centered on building a highly scalable SFH investing business. While I’ll still be working hard to build those relationships with the apartment investors, brokers, agents, lenders, etc, I’m going to focus my short-term efforts on taking advantage of this great time to invest in houses.