There will be a lot of things that need to be considered when you are buying real estate to build up your property business. Whether or not to buy a house or apartments is one of these questions, and it might seem obvious that, if you want to make the most money over the longest period of time, buying a number of apartments rather than just one house would be the better option.

However, this might not actually be the case, and several factors will need to be taken into account such as your budget and what you intend to do with the property once you have bought it.

One idea that might appeal is to buy one house and then convert it into apartments. This offers up many different benefits; read on to find out more.

More Money

The first thing that will benefit you if you choose to take on the challenge (because it is a challenge) of turning a house into apartments is that, overall, you will make more money. It’s usually less expensive to buy one property than it is to buy several (although this is not always the case, and you should certainly do your calculations before committing to buy anything). Even with the renovation costs that you will need to pay out to complete the conversion, if you then sell each apartment separately when the work is complete, it is likely that you will make a bigger profit than if you did up the house and sold that on instead.

If you choose to rent out the apartments, again, because there are more of them you can earn more money per month (plus, having one or two empty apartments isn’t such an issue if you are still gaining money from the others; having one empty house and gaining no income at all is a much bigger problem to have).

Easier to Sell or Rent

Again, this will depend on where you are buying and what the target market is, but if you convert a property into smaller apartments, it will be much easier to sell them on or rent them out compared to a single dwelling. This is particularly true if you are close to a city center or commuter area.

Of course, you’ll still need to make the apartments appealing, with high-quality interior finishes and as many extras as you can afford such as hiring someone for line marking services to create parking spaces. However, if you can do all of this you are much more likely to be able to either sell or rent the apartments than you would be able to do the same with a whole house, making the project a more successful one.

You’ll Gain Skills

If nothing else, converting a house into apartments will give you plenty of skills that might come in very useful in the future. You might not necessarily be carrying out the conversion work itself (although of course, there’s nothing to stop you from getting involved; it’s your project, after all), but you will be project managing it, speaking to contractors, dealing with suppliers, working to a budget and a timeframe…

All of these things are skills that successful real estate businesspeople have, and the more you can learn about them, the better; this kind of project will give you an edge.