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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

Owning rental property is a small business. You can earn far more, reliably, without the whims of a number going up and down, than you can by passively investing it.

In general I have always found the passive investment "standard smart advice" to be wrong, but I'm a contrarian by nature. I actively manage everything because I like to know what's going on.

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I believe you can do well with rentals, but not without labor and knowledge. The danger is people thinking they will just hire a manager.

I would also rather be an engineer than fix apartments.

It's crazy, I just call a contractor I trust and they fix it, and then charge enough rent to make sure it covers anticipated maintenance, and then have a business insurance policy to protect against big disasters.

Wow, I'm a genius!

In other words:

- you previously spent time building relationships with contractors. You didn’t just type in property management in Google

- a significant overhead goes to insurance and management. Your comfortable putting money as needed into the venture. You have knowledge of legal pitfalls of being a landlord.

- you regularly spend time managing these contracts

Charging enough without leaving the property empty can be a challenge. As is finding tenants who won't trash the place so often you lose money on all the repairs and turn over.

Depending on the market that may be so easy you'll think everyone else is stupid. Or it may be so hard you wonder if you are doing something wrong.

Sure, but you're managing the property. And that's great! Many get into RE thinking it's a set it and forget it type thing. That's not the case. But the work is pretty well understood and it can be done as a side gig, making it great for someone who wants to add to their income.

I know a number of people who have done very well with RE, but they all actively manage their properties.

Numbers go up and down for rental businesses all the time – up slowly as you collect rent, down quickly as you need to perform maintenance.

Right, no one should ever do anything! One calamity and you go bust. That's why no one ever can handle managing rental property, it's so dangerous /s

It's good, but it's work. I have a friend, really good swift/iPhone dev who charge 350 to 500€ an hour (so 200-350 after taxes). If after taxes and expenses (loan repayment) he can earn 2-3.5k for less than 10h of work per year that can be a good investment. But that's not taking into account the principal he invested, the fact that the job would bore him, the fact that he can't improve his skills.

It might be an okay investment for me (I'm a salary man, can't be bothered with freelance work), but for him I'd bet it's a money loosing proposition

[edit] the 500€/hour is an outlier, he wanted out of a project and kept increasing his rates, which were accepted up to that point.

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