As someone looking into investing in residential real estate, you need to figure out what kind of properties will be most profitable. Typically, the choice lies  between single family homes, and apartments. Both offer different benefits and require different levels of investment so it’s important to do research on what will serve your market (and your budget) best.

With apartments, you definitely have lower cost-per-unit than if you were to buy multiple houses as investments.Even though your cost-per-unit is lower with apartments, the startup cost is much lower when you invest in single family homes. Buuuuut…if you invest in an apartment building, you really have no choice as to how many properties you’ll be managing, it’s pretty much all or nothing. With houses, you can pick the number of properties you want to invest in and go from there.

As far as managing the properties, there’s definitely more of a need for a property manager when you’re investing in apartments. With a house, or houses, it’s pretty much your responsibility to deal with the tenants and properties, because hiring a property manager is not a cheap deal if you’re only renting out a few houses. Now that we’re talking about dealing with tenants, you should recognize that those who rent single family homes are usually long-term tenants; those who rent apartments typically do not expect to stay there for an extended amount of time.

Basically, look at how much you’re planning on investing in start-up costs, and whether or not you want a property management company to work with or not, and go from there.