"being a landlord is a second job" is something I hear a lot from renters, I've never heard this from an actual small time landlord who has two or less rental properties. And yeah, if you have 30%+ equity in your house you can generally have a property management company handle everything for perpetual 10% of the rent + first month's rent and come out even, in most competitive markets. Being a landlord in a low cost of living area, more than an hour from a major city is probably a losing proposition for most people under 50.
My parents, others in my family, and a couple former co-workers have had a rental unit or two at one time or another. Exactly one of those didn't strongly advise against it, and that one said his situation was good only because he'd been careful to buy units where they were almost certainly going to go to nursing school students, who are likely to be relatively-stable, stick around for at least a couple years, leave before long if they can't pay anymore for some reason, and extremely unlikely to trash the place or try to run a meth lab out of it or anything like that. In all other cases the complaints are similar: the return on time and money invested is just way, way too low to be worth the risk & frustration.
But, none of those engaged a property management company. Maybe that makes the difference.
My parents were landlords for almost 20 years. They owned a six family that we also lived in most of the time. It was a ton of work and they didn't make hardly anything after expenses. We had several cleanups that could be on the Hoarders TV show.
My grandparents were landlords for like 50 years. They said they wouldn't be worth it if their children weren't doing all the work for free.
The reason I don’t have rental property as investment is from seeing how much work it was for my parents to rent out half a duplex and, later, a 3 BR SFR. Both places were completely trashed at least once by tenants and even the “good” tenants were frequently late with the rent or had other drama for them to deal with.
The idea that a typical small landlord sits on their ass and cashes fat checks is not matched by what I’ve seen not anything I’ve heard from friends who wouldn’t take my advice to stay away.
I did exactly this. After a period of initial search I got some good tenants, and my only interaction with them is calling the plumber or something on their behalf every other month.
