What does this say about tenants though? You expect someone to buy a home that you can’t afford, rent it to you until you can. Meanwhile, maintain it while you rent it, pay the property taxes and insurance as well, basically have a tiny cash flow off my investment-all to just be forced to sell it to you in the end when my only hope of getting ahead on this was some long term appreciation or the build up of equity. Spoiler, equity doesn’t usually build up very fast. Better chance of appreciation building up, but even that is a pretty big risk because you’re trying to time the market.

I was a landlord for a bit and what I’ve found is that tenants that have probably never actually owned a property have no ideas about what it cost to own a property and what the landlord is actually making off your rent. Sure even if you pay a few thousand in rent, it may be the landlord only has a couple hundred of cash flow. Then, one repair on the home can easily wipe out a year or more of that. One bad tenants can wipe out a decade of it.

I recall my worst tenants ever. Weren’t even that bad all things considered but the were dirty people. The house was filthy when they moved out. The walls and floors were coated in a grease like film. I had a no smoking policy in the lease but it was obvious they smoked and used the floor as an ashtray. There was a handful of other things that were just broken. Anyways it was a 4 bedroom house that was 2500 sf. I got a few quotes to paint and fix the list of little stuff. The cheapest quote I got was $15k but there was also a $20k and a $30k quote. I decided not to go after these people for the damages but I told them the long list of repairs and because of the condition and cost of repairing it all I would not return their deposit which was only about $2500. Anyway they completely lost it calling me a slumlord and how there’s no way they could have generated that much damage and reported me to the state and wanted to sue me but I don’t think they found a lawyer to take the case. They thought I was marking up all the repairs costs and scamming them. I just sent them all 3 quotes and told them I chose the lowest and wasn’t asking them to pay the excess (I knew it would just be a bad debt). But they went through every line item and said they knew what it cost to paint a house and it was overpriced. This is where the problem is. They’ve never owned a property, never hired a contractor or handyman so they actually have no idea what these things cost. And in my city, construction is booming and everything housing related does seem expensive but it is what it is. There’s no cheaper way to do it besides DIY. But my labor isn’t free either and I’d charge more for my time than the contractors do so that’s not really a solution either.