Apartment Buildings: The Safe Way to Invest in Commercial Real Estate

As a long-term investment, real estate is hard to beat. Most people only know about residential real estate investing, buy a house or unit and rent it out. Many people think that commercial real estate investing is only for professionals with deep pockets. Of course, it helps a lot if you have a lot of money or have been dealing with commercial real estate for many years. But it is far from impossible for beginners with little money to get started in commercial real estate.

Commercial property covers a wide range of buildings, the most common types being retail stores, hotels, apartment buildings, warehouses, industrial buildings and office buildings. The money needed to buy commercial property ranges from a few thousand dollars for a small store in a poor location to hundreds of millions or more for huge buildings in prime locations.

Many people think that they will never be able to borrow the money needed to close a business deal. But this is rarely a problem. In commercial real estate, loans are based on the deal. If the deal is good, it is usually not a problem to get the money needed to close the deal. If the deal isn’t good, you’ll have trouble finding the money, but this isn’t really a problem.

So what type of commercial property is easiest to start with? Investing in apartment buildings is an easy way to get started in commercial real estate. Recession or not, people always need to live somewhere. Also, since you have many tenants, your cash flow is reasonably secure. It is unlikely that 50 tenants will move in next week. If you have an office building with only one or two tenants, your cash flow will take a huge hit if one of the tenants leaves. Please note that you do not manage the units yourself, you outsource that work to a specialized property management company. Since all of your units are in one location, the property can be managed much more cheaply than if your properties were spread across the city.