MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35707183/ns/business-real_estate/) earlier this year reported that snowstorms and bad weather during January and February plunged residential real estate sales by almost 8%. The National Association of Realtors further said that this was the lowest reading in 10 months.

This is too bad for those aspiring residential real estate investors. Instead of being able to capitalize on the bad economy, as many have done, the weather seems to have contrived against them. But for all those who thought that residential is the best place to buy investment property, this is just one of the reasons why you should avoid buying houses and other residential investment properties, like apartment complexes.

First off, as can be seen by the report, residential real estate is affected by a lot of factors. The weather for one, and also the economy. There are also various interior design and architecture trends that make it difficult for you to sell a house. This is why real estate brokers nowadays resort to various strategies and even tricks just to be able to sell a house. And this is true even now that houses are selling at a loss!

Second, because of the fact that residential units are selling at a loss, the market has become saturated by an influx of newbie investors and brokers. This makes it a lot more difficult to get commission on sales or to acquire prime investment properties. Whats more, as the competition gets tougher, you need to spend a lot on open houses and other forms of advertising. Added to this is the stress of having to deal with the tears and woes of the owners who have just gone bankrupt.

As if these two reasons are not enough, another thing that plagues the industry is the fact that it has a high bank loan failure rate. With apartment complexes (although this is technically commercial real estate, but its still something thats residential, wherein the owner can live on one of the units) having a 58% loan failure rate. Because of this and the many hassles of dealing with residential short sales, banks hate it! So if youre thinking of getting a loan, you can just forget about it.

With these major flaws of residential real estate, buying commercial investments doesnt seem so bad. In fact, given a lot of preparation and research, commercial real estate is the best place to buy investment property. For instance, self storage investment,/a> is one of its most stable sectors with a bank loan failure rate of only 8% (the lowest). Not only that, but its also recession-proof because the demand for it does not decrease even if the economy is bad.