>That's why landlords are able to own hundreds to thousands of properties / units.
Presumably they have dozens/hundreds of workers to manage those units? I'm not sure how "number of units owned" is indicative of easiness. A quantitative trading firm has billions of dollars under management. Does that mean it's even easier to be a quantitative trading firm?
>Presumably they have dozens/hundreds of workers to manage those units?
Correct... which makes being a landlord exceptionally easy. All you have to do is have enough money. There is no cognitive or physical load that a landlord is required to carry, you simply open your checkbook.
The difference is, investments can go bad if the company fails.
A landlord never loses their money because they own the land. If a resident trashes their place, well they have insurance for that, better call the contractors to fix it up.
A friend of mine manages money for a multi-billionaire that made his money in real estate. He told me once they were walking by a block of brownstones in Manhattan and the guy didn't even know he owned most of the block.
So you don't even need to know what you own as a landlord, you just pay other people to know it for you!
The problem is that there is no incentive to "make less profit" by hiring management companies, they just jack up all rent (and dozens of other dirty tricks like collusion) to cover it
If you are working full-time and have your own house maintenance _and_ you are trying to assess tenants, fill out paperwork, fix issues at the rental property, travel to and from rental property, coordinate contractors, paint in between tenants, etc., it's work.
My (ex)mother-in-law went in to a retirement home, during the first year we wanted her condo to be available (eventually) if it didn't work out. Being a landlord for that year sucked.
But this is work that almost all [0] landlords could just pay people to do for them, making it easy again.
Out in the real world, the cost a landlord would pay a management company to deal with all of this is absolutely baked into the cost of rent charged to the consumer. A landlord may choose to do it themselves to pocket that margin as profit, but they need not.
The only job requirement for "landlord" is "own an asset."
[0] And yes, there are exceptions that prove the rule - e.g. people in declining areas with decreasing demand for housing who don't have enough margin, or people who dramatically underprice their rent for some reason
I once moved away from a condo I owned, and I thought it would make financial sense to rent it out, but I didn't want to really be a landlord, so I hired a management company to manage the rental. They charged I don't know, 15% or something of the rent, but did almost nothing for me. They collected the check and sent me 85% of it, and that's it.
Toilet overflowing? The tenant would call the management company, and the management company would call me and say the toilet was overflowing, do I want to do anything about it? If yes, they would give me a few plumbers' phone numbers and I had to take time out of my day, call around, arrange and pay for everything.
Air Conditioning broke? The tenant would call the management company, and the management company would call me and say the A/C was broke, do I want to do anything about it? Same story as above, they didn't actually do anything.
After the tenants moved out, the management company would call me and suggest a few cleaners, which I'd have to arrange and pay.
They charged me 15% to act as a phone middleman. I eventually concluded I didn't have the time/energy to be a landlord so I sold the place.
Yeah that's about what I discovered when I considered hiring a management company. Some will have plumbers and electricians and HVAC people on staff and they can deal with issues (up to a point) but you will be billed for it, on top of the percentage of the rent they keep.
In my situation, their fees would have skimmed basically all the positive cash flow out of the property.
Presumably they have dozens/hundreds of workers to manage those units? I'm not sure how "number of units owned" is indicative of easiness. A quantitative trading firm has billions of dollars under management. Does that mean it's even easier to be a quantitative trading firm?