The real estate market is always shifting gears, and the key to making your best returns is knowing what to invest in, and when. Right now, multifamily properties are hot for long-term investors, because they are priced to move in many locales and the market is relatively unconsolidated compared to some other forms of commercial real estate. If you’ve been waiting to figure out when you should dive into residential income properties, 2020 might just be the right time for you to line up your multifamily real estate purchases.

Why buy multi-unit properties? Well, for starters, they’re much more cost-efficient. The total property tax on a complex with 50 units is much, much less than the taxes on 50 freestanding single-family dwellings in most cases. You also don’t need to maintain as high a rate of occupation across the units to be profitable. When you rent a single-family house, you only make money when there’s a tenant in it. The right multifamily property can sometimes reach a return with as little as two-thirds occupancy, depending on the cost of maintenance and loan payments, along with other business expenses.

They are also simpler to manage because they are in one place. That means your maintenance team doesn’t need to go all over to take care of repairs and turns, allowing them to do more on shift. This, in turn, means you need fewer bodies to get the work done since you’re not paying for transit time while they hop from place to place. This can be a real saving when investing in multifamily real estate.

It’s not just about the cost cleanup, either. The market for apartments and townhouses tends to be in higher demand in most cities than the market for single-family rental homes. This is due in part to the push for homeownership among many of the people looking into single-family dwellings, and also because of the lower cost of renting flats and townhouses in most areas. Higher demand means it’s easier to fill the properties when you have turnover.

The same principles apply to figure out your best fit for size. You want to buy properties that you’ll be able to finance readily and fill easily, so that means figuring out the rental cap before you invest. If you can rehab a property and your financing covers the renovation, that can sometimes bring even more incentives. Check out your community’s housing needs and what your local government is doing to make it easier for you to supply housing, that should help you figure out your best choice of multifamily real estate investments in your city.