Now I know this is a question that does not necessarily have a correct answer however I would be curious to hear what everyone thinks is the "best" property type. Assuming you can only develop an expertise in one property type and that will be your niche for the rest of your career what would you choose and why?
For example I have experience with Office (CBD & Suburban) and Industrial. Part of me has a strong desire to get involved in retail because the dynamics of the tenants are interesting to me and if I was ever to make investments with my personal money for most people CBD office will be out of reach however retail/multi-family might be more realistic.
A wife.
This is a hilarious answer, but also a terrible answer. Talk about a depreciating asset. You can only do so much reno work to keep it modern and costs skyrocket in line with your income.
Way too much TI/Cap Exp.
I argue this a lot with people and my answer is senior housing for two reasons.
Demographic shift in the United States for Baby Boomers Aging.
It is the only real estate product in my opinion that is not directly linked to job/business growth in a particular city. All other product types: multi-family, office, industrial & retail rely on new jobs/businesses to bolster their returns.
Urban retail. Sexy buildings and locations, get to know all the restaurant / bar operators, bigger focus on each tenant's business, overall less vanilla than multi and office.
Bless your heart, but a lot of that, like what @dingdong08" said, is why I would never do retail. Some of the best restaurants are the worst at paying their bills, "less vanilla" sounds a lot like "less predictable," etc.
Yeah, sexy in RE is generally a bad thing. Some of the individual guys I know who have made the most in RE (outside of the big PE guys or billionaire types, more like the local guys who have made a ton) invest in the least sexy class B multifamily or have gotten really good at building the least sexy industrial buildings.
I had a mentor when I was first out of college whose saying was "Never fall in love with a building because you can never fuck it but it can fuck you."
If you want to break out on your own and aren't well funded multifamily's the easiest because you can scale it and as others have said, the leases are simple, you don't really have to underwrite t/i's to a tenant's credit (or lack of) or have the capital available to attract decent tenants through t/i $'s and brokerage fees. The short term nature of the leases and ability to acquire more units at a lesser cost/unit means that you can mitigate the risk of having large blocks of vacant space for extended periods and getting a new tenant isn't a multi-month process like it is for office or industrial.
I like industrial because you avoid most of the above but to get good industrial properties as opposed to crappy B/C stuff it costs a lot of money. And when you dip into B/C props in office or industrial you're attracting a lower quality tenant and have to deal with them.
I hate retail personally. It has changed and continues to change so much with regard to online shopping that it's just a really risky proposition to buy properties that my be unused in the future. If you go back 10-15 years there were very desirable tenants who are now out of business or pretty shaky and back then you never would have thought it possible (think CompUSA, Linen's n Things, and even Best Buy, even though they're still operating-they were all super desirable tenants not too long before they went under). When you get into lower retail you're also dealing with a lot of mom and pop stores and it's a bitch to deal with them. Buy a strip mall and yes you may get a good anchor like CVS or a grocery store, but you're also going to have the nail beauty salon and other dipshit one off shops that are a headache. Urban retail may seem sexy but one off restaurants are some of the worst tenants you could ever have. Yes, you may be able to get reservation at the hottest place in town but half your tenants won't be up to date on rent and depending on the city making exterior renovations can nearly take an act of Congress and you may end up with union issues.
Specialty RE like senior housing or HC is great but it's pretty institutional now so I don't know how much room there is for entrepreneurial activity.
If you're staying in the institutional shops, just pick what you like. In my opinion if you want to do things on your own or with a small group of people in the future, multi-family is the path of least resistance.
This is perhaps one of the most thorough/thought provoking descriptions of an asset type and CRE overall.