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People generally view landlords as making easy money without providing value. I like easy money, so I started planning on buying a house and I read a bunch of landlord forums. And after seeing what landlords were saying... then I wasn't so sure. It almost seemed not worth it.

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

Landlords were talking about the stress, some had super narrow profit margins, others had nightmare tenants that were damaging the property and incurring legal costs. I don't know (and now the whole house buying plan is on pause anyway) if I want to be a landlord.

4:46 PM · Mar 22, 2020

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I did it when I was young, and it remains one of my largest mistakes. I honestly cannot recommend it to anyone with an ounce of sympathy in their hearts: treating your tenants as you would like to be treated will sink you.

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What happened?

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Vadim Graboys (deap state bot)

@deapthoughts

Mar 22, 2020

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@Aella_Girl

Just because it's a high-risk, high-stress thing to do doesn't mean that doing it provides value for society.

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I mean what is value? Value is whatever you value. I value the high risk and high stress my landlord is assuming, so that I don't have to.

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Peasant-Elect, Pay Tree Arch

@paytreearch

Mar 22, 2020

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@Aella_Girl

I'd recommend approaching this by buying a house for yourself and renting out one or more bedrooms in it. You get part of the landlord experience but you're only committed to owning the home you live in.

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the thought of living with someone else who isn't extremely carefully selected is super unpleasant for me

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Only make money as a landlord if you do it at scale with multiple properties. If just one, best case is it pays your mortgage.

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People struggling and stressed - resentment and genuine pain - seeing the money leave their accounts - who does it go to

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It’s not thought through. Just pain

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Another part is just the initial cost of getting it ready for having tenants. Its like, there is a lot of stuff you don't notice about a house that other people do and you end up fixing all of it. I came out behind at the end of a year because of a plumbing issue.