Welcome to my life.

I see many cases of ‘mice with matches’ in my crystal ball...

My Uncle Guido know's how to solve those issues...

Yeah? Me too.

11 rental units in 2 states. So far this year, 3 nasty evictions (places were absolutely destroyed), which wiped out any hope of return on investment. As of tomorrow, 3 of the 11 units are vacant. Thank heavens that 10 of the 11 units are in a state that allows evictions, and as we hold no mortgages on these properties, the Federal eviction ban did not apply.

What's infuriating is that none of these tenants responded to any of our management company's offer to discuss mitigated rent. Just ignored repeated requests for a discussion and trashed the places.

So...yeah. People crack me up when they talk about just becoming a landlord and raking in profits. Not this pilot...

I have had wonderful success with my rentals. Not a one has had even a single issue with a late payment over the years.

The key I’ve found is to focus on single-family homes in good school districts. I like 3/2 and 4/2 homes that are at least 1700sqft. Sure, you pay more for them up front but they pay dividends on the back end. Average mortgage is $1500 with 20% down on one. Average rental price is $2500 to $3000 /month in my area.

Tenants who can afford that usually make money and generally care about things like their credit score and ability to continue renting nice properties. We carefully screen based on credit score, income, and background history. No issues.

This is spot on. While I am not some rental mogul like you two sound, I did have a property that we rented for a number of years. The key things were:

Credit score, no BK's, 3 times the monthly rent in income and a months rent security deposit. We had three different tenants in there and every one of them was awesome. You just have to be choosy on who you rent to, not to mention we had a management company that took their job seriously, vetting any renter well.

I would personally use the strong sales market right now to exit the rental business. I got out in the strong market of 2006 and never looked back. If you study a little bit of the demographics in the future it is scary for rentals. Like most of the developed world our birth rate is below replacement. Without unencumbered immigration our population will shrink in the coming decades while the boomers retire to smaller homes and slowly pass away.

Concur. I have two friends who are stuck with tenants who aren’t paying rent yet can’t be evicted. They both plan to sell as soon as this blows over. They barely made any money (other than equity, obvi) over the years due to repairs, maintenance, damage, etc. Not worth it from a cash flow standpoint.

I think you’re going to see a decline in housing prices as people start putting their rentals up for sale, flooding the market—which is going to result in fewer rentals, exacerbating the housing crisis for those who can’t afford to buy.

I’m starting to see the far reaching effects of C19, and I don’t like what im seeing.

That’s what I did. Every time I got a new job, upgraded and decided to move to base etc, I kept my house. Collected a few rentals this way and they were all places I purchased to live in - in other words, not garbage low-income housing.

I would agree with this, my property is condos, but it is in a decent area so for the most part we haven't had much trouble. I think we just got a bad combo of opportunists + covid.

In my location I'll never, ever have to worry about low demand, but long-term rent control might be an issue.

Thread drift alert, but I’ll keep it going. Friend of mine had a tenant die in one of the properties. Body wasn’t discovered for 2-3 weeks. For any of you with experience in the first responder world, you’ll know how utterly horrid and catastrophic that level of decomp can be.

The entire apartment had to be gutted.

Now there’s a battle between the insurance company and the individual’s estate. Really ugly.

I’m all for passive income, but when things go south, the headaches of being a landlord can be absolutely enormous.

Keeping in the thread drift: What about Real Estate Investment Trusts? Are they an alternative? What do you give up?

Sure, it removes the uncertainty and hassle of being a landlord.

But I'd avoid office-space commercial real estate like the plague right now, except perhaps in the very hottest markets. While the telework/zoom thing is overblown, there will certainly be SOME post-covid shift to permanant telework... even a single-digit shift (combined with recession) would create a glut of office spaces, and it would take longer than usual for that to correct. In the meantime, prices would likely plummet.