[jareklupinski]

they lived in NYC and the apartment was in Florida, so even the smallest bumps in the road required a round-trip flight just to start figuring out how to solve the issue

basically if the goal was "to make money", there was never a viable path once the rubber hit the road (if they chose a nearer place, the initial costs would never be realized)

[bartonfink]

that is a uniquely boneheaded approach to managing a rental property. you can say "there never was a viable path" about anything if you chucklefuck your way through it instead of doing it well.

[bombcar]

Even when you're not renting remotely (which is the worst possible option in many cases) you still have tons of other things that can come into play:

* Bad tenants (lost rental revenue, eviction costs, property damage, and they're likely judgement proof so that money is just gone)

* No tenants (price too high, nobody wants to move, nobody wants to rent, etc) - rentals should be calculated on 20% vacancy.

* Other property wear and tear and damage (landlords often very badly budget for big ticket items; to be fair, owners are really bad at it too. The IRS depreciation tables are not gifts; you will pay about 1-4% of the value or more a year in repairs, etc.

* Strange legal issues can crop up, not limited to liability, tenant lawsuit defense, etc. But your property can also be eminent domained, declared a superfund site, or more. Sure, it's unlikely, but if you only have one property and it happens, it's going to hurt.

* And the biggest issue from there being a viable path (outside of appreciation gambling) is that you're competing with other single-family landlords who don't account for or care about the issues above, which drives rental prices down to "a bit more than mortgage payment + taxes".

And then if you succeed with the appreciation, unless you relatively constantly churn your property, you're missing out and falling behind what it could do elsewhere. Appreciation when you're 20% down hits 5x harder than appreciation when you're 100% owning it outright, and every payment brings you from one to the other.

There is a reason that professional real estate companies that invest in housing want to invest in multi-family dwellings, because it lets them control for some or all of the risks above. If you want to move from gambling on appreciation to actually being a profitable landlord, you end up imitating them.

[jareklupinski]

if "doing it well" means doing what these people are doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40254573

it may have been for the best :)