Chris Tsao wrote:
How come rental houses in the suburbs with a few apartments in them
usually always cost much much much less to buy than if these houses
were just a one-family houses?

Because they _are_ rental property in areas zoned for rental, not
single-dwelling. In areas w/ rentals, one typically can not count on
property values remaining stationary or rising to the extent of most
residential neighborhoods simply because rental property is subject to
the vagaries of bad tenants and being managed by poor landlords (either
for indifference and/or incompetence or actual design). This is, of
course, a generalization that to which there can be found exceptions,
but as you've noted, it is typical.

In some areas I am pondering moving to (and ones that years ago that I
used to ponder moving to), the houses for the price that I want to
spend are either too big for me or too small. It's difficult to
impossible to find one that's inbetween.


From what I've seen in real estate brochures and online, you get more
for your money in hotels too. I am pondering buying a hotel and then
turning it into my own private house.

???? This makes absolutely no sense to me--you're letting purchase
price control the property selection first? Your first statement says
you want to spend enough to buy properties that are too big--so spend
less would seem a workable alternative. Then, otoh, you say the same
dollars don't buy a large enough house. That then sounds as though you
must be comparing one very expensive area to another of much less.
That's the proverbial "apples and oranges" -- doesn't work that way.
Real estate is "location, location, location" -- simple mantra, but
very important.

The idea of buying a commercial property with thinking to convert it to
single-family dwelling is probably _not_ a good one---first of all, you
may not be able to effect a zoning change to prevent it from continuing
to be classified as commercial and if so, the taxes and other ancillary
costs are likely to make it an expensive proposition. It will also
undoubtedly suffer from the same problem you've noted above--a
residence in a commercial area is simply not going to have a very high
resale value so you would be quite unlikely to be able to recoup any
investment made in the remodeling. OTOH, if it were a reasonable
neighborhood and not too terribly rundown, one _might_ be able to
renovate and convert to apartments and make a go of something that
way--but it would certainly take a good analysis of the area and
renovation costs, likelihood of rental at decent rate of return, etc.,
etc., etc., before one would want to make such an investment.