How to Buy a Small Multifamily Rental (2-4 Units) in 2025

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Small multifamily rentals may be the secret to turning average investors into millionaires. These unassuming properties are in the perfect “sweet spot” for scaling a real estate portfolio, helping you reach financial independence faster with more passive income than regular, single-family rentals, but with even fewer expenses. Today, we’re giving you the five steps to buy your first small multifamily and why 2025 may be the best time to get in the game. Dave, your host, is financially free right now primarily because of small multifamily rentals. His first rental was a small multifamily, he house-hacked a small multifamily, and over a decade later, this remains his favorite real estate investment—for good reason. Small multifamily properties bring in more rent but leave you with only one roof, one furnace, and one foundation to worry about. You can use the best, lowest down payment debt to get one, and just a few of these properties could make you financially free. So, how do you buy your first multifamily property? We’ll break down the five beginner-friendly steps to get there, from picking a market to finding deals, getting a loan, analyzing for cash flow, and closing and managing. This is the small multifamily blueprint that works in 2025 (we’re currently using it to invest!). In This Episode We Cover Why small multifamily rentals are in the perfect investing “sweet spot” for 2025 The five simple steps you can take this year to buy a small multifamily rental Why smaller multifamily rentals often outperform larger ones How to get into your first small multifamily for just 3.5% down The best real estate markets for small multifamily investing in 2025 And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1178 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes are the best real estate investment for anyone looking
0:05.4	to build wealth and achieve financial freedom in 2025.
0:09.8	And today, I will share the unique advantages of small multifamily properties in the
0:14.4	current market that we're in.
0:16.0	I'll outline step by step exactly how to find and buy one, And I'll share a few mistakes you need to avoid
0:22.8	if you're going to invest in this asset class. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets
0:32.2	Real Estate podcast. I'm your host, Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing here at Bigger Pockets.
0:39.1	And on this show, we help you achieve financial freedom through real estate investing.
0:44.3	Today on the show, we're talking about one of my all-time favorite topics and favorite strategies,
0:50.3	particularly for new investors' small multifamily properties.
0:55.0	When I say small multifamily, I'm specifically talking about properties with two to four units.
1:01.0	These are, like I said, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes.
1:05.0	The reason I like them so much is that they provide more economies of scale than just your basic single family homes.
1:12.8	But they are easier to acquire
1:14.8	and they are less risky than larger multifamily buildings.
1:18.6	And I think this sort of makes them a perfect sweet spot
1:22.5	for almost every investor,
1:24.4	whether your early career or you're more experienced
1:27.0	and are just trying to
1:27.8	scale a bigger portfolio. So in this episode, what we're going to do is I'll start by explaining
1:33.3	the unique advantages of two to four unit properties, especially in the current high home
1:39.6	price, higher interest rate environment that we're currently in. Next, I will walk through a five-step blueprint of how to find, analyze, finance, and then
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