The reality is in many cases the 'profit' margin is negative! There's many many stories of owners that quit the situation in disgust and fear of how bad it is financially, due to running costs. A bad year of maintenance, a bad tenant, can cause big losses in a business where margins are usually slim for the first decade of ownership.

If an investment house was a business, it often takes a decade to see substantial returns, sometimes after many years of hard slog and even losses. Would you accept that from the businesses that hacker news dreams of?