> What? No. Explain to me how after putting 10% down, I was able to get out of PMI because I had 20% equity after the first 18 months of my mortgage? After all, at 18 months at 3.5% I've only paid down 2.1% of the principal. That's not how that works. Principal != Equity.

So there was appreciation, that's great but it's difficult to bank it until you sell the property. Investors usually don't qualify for sub 20% down so PMI is never even a factor. This is timing, which I've also explained. If you buy low and appreciation follows that's great, but it can also go the reverse which is a risk for an investor.

> A "huge risk"? No, it's a pretty safe bet. Positive appreciation on home prices in the US has happened 28 out of the last 30 years.

Positive appreciation is great. But it's doesn't always exceed inflation and if it does you have no control of that and are just hoping it does. I already mentioned it's timing the market in terms of appreciation. If you bought a rental in 2007, you likely didn't appreciate for a decade. That's a long time to have your money locked up and be exposed to risk for nothing. The money down, the risk of bad tenants, the risk of the government ban evictions, squatters, just normal risk of owning a maintaining a property (roof, foundation, plumbing, etc), so much more that you're ignoring.

> Then maybe you can't afford to be a landlord?

No, that takes us back to my original point of why landlords need to make a profit. They're not guaranteed a profit, almost no business is, but it needs to be a part of their calculus. That whole point is actually my counterpoint to your comment about how of landlords shouldn't have profit and are leeches and how they should be forced to sell there property to you after you rented it without risk for a few years - just get a mortgage if that's what you want. It's not the landlords fault if you individually can't afford to buy that property. Go live in rural Nevada, it's cheap.