[apercu]

At scale it's easy.

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.

[oldstrangers]

Yes, someone that owns one rental property probably has it a lot harder than someone that owns 300.

[JeremyNT]

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

[ryandrake]

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.

[SoftTalker]

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.

[bluefirebrand]

It still does generally pay off at a lot higher rate per hour spent than just about any other type of work though