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I can assure you as my wife and I are starting into the rental business that leasing a residence is not passive.

If you're renting your first couple places, absolutely not. But at some point you hit a mark where you have a property manager doing all the day-to-day and a few leasing agents filling vacancies and it becomes as passive as you want it to be.

That's true. The same could be said of many of these software products. I think passive income is more about the goal of least ongoing direct effort to highest income than spending zero time.

In my experience (family business is property rental) I think the point at which you can afford a property manager is pretty far down the line for most people.

A cheap property manager or estate agent is generally not worth it - their main goal being to rent the property as quickly as possible to anyone, rather than ensuring rental to a good tenant.

Decent property managers cost a fair bit of money and unless you own the property outright or have a very low mortgage it's tough to afford a good manager and have a reasonable passive income from the property as well.

Another adjective springs to mind, also beginning with "P-A"...

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