[jrochkind1]

> If I move out, and I rent out my home, it covers monthly payments approximately exactly.

That's not actually sustainable. You have repairs you're going to need to do, sometimes unexpectedly large ones. You have tenants that move out, and then marketing expenses and/or vacancies. If you're unlucky you have bad tenants that do damage or don't pay or need to be evicted after not paying.

It can work temporarily (unless you are unlucky), waiting for a better time to sell. But most people who need to move don't really want to be in the landlord business, and it is a business with financial risk and headaches.

[tdfx]

I would also add that there's nothing worse than being a landlord of a single unit/property. Pretty much all of the functions that you'll need to fulfill as a landlord take the same amount of time for 2-3+ units as they do for 1, except your potential returns are lower. Setting up a system to collect rent, managing repair requests and vendors, a tenant marketing/screening plan, extended vacancies, etc. are all much more painful to do for a single unit than for a collection of units. I see a lot of people throw the "just rent it out" line without considering any of this.