[no_wizard]

I'd go so far as to say - though this is based on my experience, keep that in mind - in saying that your first home should be seen as an investment vehicle so you can understand the mechanics of owning a home while reaping the upside of another income

This helped us tremendously. Rental income while not game changing when you own only 1-2 properties, does help build up your assets. It also allows you to offset some expenses as business expenses, which is nice.

There is overhead of course, and we pay a property management company to do things on our behalf and they get a small percent of the rent every month, but overall it taught us a ton and we did it without incurring significant additional expenses thankfully.

Now we are up to our 6th rental property and things are going smooth so far.

This is building true wealth via real estate in my opinion. Assuming we keep going, we'll likely own 12+ properties eventually, which we will sell down the road many years from now likely for significant upside, all the while having steady income coming in from them until we sell.

[bombcar]

The danger in real estate investing is that 80% of the time it's (moderately) easy money, 10% of the time it's annoyingly break-even, and 10% of the time it's absolute soul-crushing, bankruptcy-inducing devastation.

And since you're usually in one or two properties to start, if your first one is the tenant from hell in a downmarket, you're going to feel it.

[no_wizard]

There is truth to this, you have to structure yourself a certain way.

The best thing you can do is structuring everything through a corporation. This also allows some additional avenues when considering financing too. It also gives you the liability shield in case things go sideways.

There's overhead here though, for sure, and plenty of ways to go about it the wrong way, many footguns exist. Its not stress free.

If you want truly passive investments, index funds are the way to go. Which is why I think buying a home for living should fundamentally have different criteria