Is it worth it to be a landlord, or would you rather have the money in the bank??

Question

Is it worth it to be a landlord, or would you rather have the money in the bank??

Answer 1

It depends on whether you have time to deal with being a landlord.    And many of the problems one deals with when having rental property is the lack of cleanliness by the tenants.   I would rather have the money in a bank or in some other investment in my home.    Only an opinion.

Answer 2

Base in area,county,and foreclose rate.

do not rush yet..

it will take 1-3 yrs to clear this miss.

buy in very good area,and try to buy forclouser units or bank owned. be carefull and find an experienced broker.

do your own study...too

it's worth it to buy a great forclousers these days ..but you need to ask and ask as many export in this field.

my best wishes to you.

Answer 3

in good mutual funds. get divident yearly and have a good liquidity

Answer 4

its better to be an landlord. First of all, that way, your money rises with inflation.

If you have $300,000 in the bank today, in 5 years it may be worth only about today's $260,000

But if you buy a house today for $300,000, in five years it WILL be worth today's $300,000 PLUS increase in value. So infive years, you may have, say, $350,000.

Basically, if you keep money in the bank now, inflation will eat it up. But if you put it into property, you will ALWAYS have that property and even if the market is bad now, it will get better some day and you can sell it when the market is really good.

Being landlord also isn't that big of a hassle if you have good tenents. To ensure you have good tenents, buy propperties in nicer neighborhoods, and use a realtor who screens your tenents. Of course, crappy renents WILL happen from time to time, and you do need to pay for the upkeep of the house, but in the long run, the rent covers that and more.

Answer 5

I have done careful analysis of that since my father always had one or more rentals.

I found most people really didn't figure in all their costs and most importantly inflation.

The conclusion I came to was you can make money if you can do all your own plumbing, painting, cabinet work, landscaping and so on.

You can't make much or any if you pay others to do everything. Basically you are making your money off your work.

BUT in a down market you might be able to buy low and sell higher in a few  years and make a good profit. But that is about flipping houses NOT being a landlord and renting. In that case the renting is only buying time for the market to recover.

But after all the damage I have seen renters do? Like knocking out walls or moving out in the middle of the night taking all your appliances?  It doesn't seem worth it to me.

The stocks I invest in don't call me up at night and ask me to unclog their toilets.

Answer 6

I don't know if being a landlord is good in terms of the hassles you may get with your tenants.  But being a landlord probably will be more profitable than keeping your money in the bank.  

Because the interest rate you get at the bank is now below the inflation rate.  Which means that you will be loosing the purchasing value of your money by keeping your money in the bank.

I think that people will start moving away from the suburbs and closer to downtown areas due to high gas prices.  Which means that the best rental properties to buy is close to shopping, office space, and public transportation.

Answer 7

You have the opportunity to make more money being a landlord, but you also have to deal with frustrations from time to time. Deadbeat tenants, tenants that destroy your property, unexpected expenses from problems with the rental property, increase in real estate taxes, vacancies. These are the reasons you generally get better returns by renting than putting money in the bank.