In 1976, I was on vacation in Hawaii.  I was sitting at the counter of the hotel coffee shop enjoying breakfast.  A Pan Am pilot sat next to me.  I was reading an article in the newspaper business pages about real estate values in Hawaii. He asked if he could read it when I was finished.

That led me to ask if he invests in real estate.  Then he told me he owns
single-family rental houses.  Before that conversation, I had never even thought about investing in rental houses.  He then told me about an excellent
single-family rental house seminar he had taken from Florida investors Jack Miller and John Schaub called "Making It Big on Little Deals." 

Long story short, I took their seminar in 1977 in Reno.  I then switched from apartment building investing into single- family houses.  I just hope they never ask for a share of the single-family rental house profits I've earned since then. By the way, John Schaub still teaches that superb $595 seminar a few times each year--phone him at 1-800-237-9222 for details on his next seminar in Sarasota, Fla., in January.

Why invest in single-family rental houses?  Profit is the short answer.

When people ask me that question, my long answer reply is "I like single-family rental house investments because they are so easy to buy, finance, manage and profitably resell."  Just about everyone can do it.  It's not difficult.

What I especially like about rental houses is that if there's a problem (and there will be. as with any investment), it's usually a little problem which can be easily handled.  To illustrate, if the furnace in a house goes out, there's only one
unhappy tenant (not a whole apartment building full of irate tenants like I had in San Francisco).

More important, the profit opportunities with single-family rental houses are much greater than with most other investments.  On average, single-family houses appreciate in market value at least 4 percent or 5 percent annually.  That doesn't sound like much each year, but if you own a rental house for 10 years, it should appreciate more than 40 percent to 50 percent over what you paid for it.

Please remember we're talking about typical houses, not just rental houses.