Christian Osgood, a real estate investor, argues that buying single-family homes reduces local housing supply and harms communities. He recommends investing in multifamily properties instead, which keeps rentals available while letting families buy homes.
Chapters
In Stephenville and other cities that we serve, we get some comments saying, hey, don't invest here. We don't want more people. We don't want more landlords. I get that. I would never actually buy a single-family house because you buy single-family. I think those are for families who want a house. Now, if you had a house and you moved out of it and you kept it as a rental, that's fine. That's anything that any normal person can do. But as a professional real estate investor, if you're buying single-family, not only is it hard to scale, but you're reducing the supply in the market. If demand is the same or in a city like Stephenville where population is growing, Demand is actually going up, supply is going down when you buy these houses. If you buy multifamily buildings, one, all the investment money is going there, the renters have somewhere to rent, and the families have a place where they can go buy a house. You don't need to compete in the single-family space. Difficult to scale. And I actually agree with that comment. If you're investing in single-family in an area, you are negatively affecting the community that you're serving.