House:
- Real estate taxes
- Maintenance
- Upgrades required to maintain saleability (have you priced a kitchen or bathroom remodel lately?)
Renting:
- Having to deal with tenants
- Having to deal with tenants
- Having to deal with a management company
There are easier ways to make money. Any stock or business can become worthless yes, but you seem to ignore what has happened since 2007. Many real estate investments have become worthless or worse as well.
For example, my friend
- Bought a fixer-upper house near the water in a well located development for about 300K in 2006. Comps were around 400K.
- Invested 50K replacing AC, remodeling kitchen, flooring, replacing water heater, etc.
- Pays 5K per annum or whatever in taxes
- House is currently worth 180K, comps are around 150-180K
- Because he only spent 50K remodeling the place people are passing on his unit even for 180K because he needed to spend about 100K to compare with fit and finish of longer term owners.
- Currently rents it out for about $1200/mo
Had he invested that 300K in the stock market at the *worst part* in 2007 and just held through the downturn till now he would probably have ~500K worst case right now. Instead he is significantly upside down and has to deal with tenants.
