Posted by: admin, in Management, Buying Houses, Selling Houses
The advantages to a family of having sovereignty and total control over the area surrounding its abode strongly outweigh all the conveniences that might be offered by any other form of residential property even though it be more expensive and require more effort on the part of the owner to keep maintained.
That’s the down side. The up side is that the owner has a lot of latitude when it comes to doing repairs, or not doing them, that mulit-family owners don’t have. This is because minimum housing and building codes treat single family houses more leniently than they do multi-family residences.
Condominiums and Townhouses spring up where land costs are high and where packing as many people into a small area as possible is the only way housing can be built at a feasible cost. In some areas, this makes them less expensive to buy or rent, but at the cost of privacy, loss of control, and lack of inside and outside storage. Many of them have no garages, so vehicles are exposed to vandalism and the weather. Because so many people live in such concentrated proximity to each other, there are many vexations that can arise, especially when it comes to pets, children, and residents with alcohol or drug related problems.
My pet peeve is duplexes. They may seem to be two houses joined together on a single piece of land, but they are really just small apartments. As a rule, all the minimum housing and zoning requirements that apply to larger apartments also apply to them. Their lure is that an owner has two tenants to make payments instead of one, and thus spread out his risk. The reality is that one unit seems to always be vacant because of the personal habits and tastes of the tenants. One can be fastidious and the other a slop. One can keep a tidy lawn while the other collects junk. One might like classical music while the other likes rap. One might have a dog that barks all the time while the other has a gold fish. One can stop up the plumbing and cause the other a lot of grief. Consequently, one of them moves out, then the fun begins.
The remaining occupant suddenly gets the privacy of a single family house, plus an additional driveway on which to park his vehicles. He need not maintain the lawn on the vacant half; the landlord will have to pay for this. Anytime that a person seems interested in renting the vacant half, he can always poison the deal by mentioning rats, roaches, snakes, etc.; or simply by being obnoxious.
Added to this is the fact that the market for duplexes is tiny compared to the market for single family houses, so it’s hard to sell them. I’ve actually had to convert a duplex into a single family house just to get it sold.
The same disability affects all the other “plexes”. They’re not big enough to support on site supervisors, so require a lot more owner effort to keep all the tenants happy. Ask anyone who has owned both single family rentals and any of the “plexes” and I think he’ll confirm that they are by far better investments.
Who do you know who has made a lot of money in anything except single family houses, and who has cash in and retired out of real estate on the money he has made? I’d like to hear about it if you personally know of someone. So far, I haven’t met anybody personally.
