Types of USA Residential Investment Properties

Single family home (SFH)
A single family home (or SFH) is a detached residence usually housing one family. SFHs are typically built on larger plots of land, providing decent-sized, private, front and back yards and are generally considered to be “white picket fence American dream” houses. These homes usually have a driveway and attached carport or garage.

SFHs are mostly purchased or rented by families. This means a quiet, suburban, residential location is considered to be desirable. 

Multi Family Homes (MFH) - Duplex / Triplex
These multi-family housing terms simply define the number of units contained in a multi-family building. A duplex consists of two units per building; a triplex, three units per building.

Duplex houses are therefore two-family homes while triplex homes have three individual units on one plot of land. They are typically one-family-up-one-family-down in design and relatively large.

Condominium (abbreviated to condo) is a legal term to describe a form of home ownership. Often misunderstood to mean apartment, a condo can actually be an apartment or a house whereby individual units in a large complex are sold, as opposed to rented out, by the owner of the complex. The Australian equivalent of this type of tenure would be to own a share of the freehold.

When you purchase a unit in a condo, you own everything from the walls inwards. All individual unit owners have shared rights to the communal areas (typically, in the USA, these include swimming pools, club houses, gyms, gardens etc.). They are typically set in blocks of two-or-three storeys, set around the swimming pools and gardens, thus providing optimum views

The maintenance of these areas becomes the responsibility of a condo management association, called a Home Owners Association (HOA). Its members are the unit owners and a board of directors is elected by the membership. Every unit owner also owns a share of interest in the HOA, plus an obligation to pay monthly fees towards the upkeep of the community.

Coach house
Coach houses (or town houses) are typically located in affluent condo communities and, as with condos in general, are popular in desirable postcode areas throughout many parts of the USA. Coach houses can be houses or converted apartments within one-or-two floors of a larger house. The principle is similar as with traditional condo communities, but coach houses are typically much larger and more luxurious, as are the amenities.