[lovich]

Being generous with your ~6 number to be either 5 or 7 houses you have either 7.8-11 people per unit?

That's slumlord territory and not any morally better than corporate landlords unless your average unit size is a 4 bed/2 bath.

Also there is zero world where you have 6 houses, 50+ people and can call yourself a small time landlord. That's being able to live entirely off of your rental income and a full time landlord. You could maybe, _maybe_ get away with describing yourself as a medium time landlord.

Small time is living in a 3 floor house and renting the other 2 floors, or owning 1 other home to rent.

[halfxing]

I'm sure OP meant 6 houses with several units in it each, not 7-11 people per house. Otherwise the distinction between house and unit doesn't make sense.

This is a small time landlord. Large landlords have easily over 10000 units, and he is one half of a percent of that.

I hope he is able to live off the rental income. It's a big job to manage 55 units and keep everything in shape and administratively going, deal with turnover and so on.

[lovich]

nah, having 6 buildings(not houses, if were being precise with terminology here) with multiple units in each, is not a small time landlord. If you can live entirely off the rental income then you are a full time landlord and can at best claim that you aren't a large corporate landlord, but you don't get to invoke the idea that you are some sort of mom and pop situation renting out a spare unit, which is what people assume when you say "small time landlord"

[nikkwong]

I'm the OP—just chiming in, I can just hardly live off the rental income I make, but its a lot less than my salary as a senior SDE. Yes what I am is not analogous to someone renting out a few extra rooms. I just think my experience is analogous to that of a small time landlord in that I know each tenant very well and we have good relationships—and I manually handle each part of their tenant experience. To add more detail, I share a bedroom in a 25 bedroom house that I own, which accounts for a bit more than half of my tenants.

[lovich]

> I can just hardly live off the rental income I make, but its a lot less than my salary as a senior SDE

there is a large gap between "can live off of"(my words) and "a lot less than my salary as a senior SDE"(your words). If you're making more than the median household income which based on the fed numbers is ~84k/yr[1] you've crossed the line past small time landlord. You may be making less than that, but I am going to be surprised if you are with ~55 tenants.

[1]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N

[halfxing]

I didn't invoke a "mon and pop situation renting out a spare unit" idea, that's your own that you're projecting on my comment.

I did say that they are a small landlord, and I stand by it given that a large landlord is several orders of magnitude larger than them. If in your world that's only a label you want to give someone renting out a single spare unit, then so be it. I disagree.

[lovich]

> mon and pop situation renting out a spare unit

> small landlord

Those are effectively synonymous to me. The line in the sand that definitively makes you not a small time landlord is if you earn enough from rental income after expenses to make as much as the average job's income.

If you disagree I will need you to define what "small time landlord" means to you then so we can figure out the gap in our understanding.