Originally Posted by will76

Rental properties are not as easy as they sound. First and foremost you need to find a property you can buy, and rent for more than your expenses (mortgage, ins. prop tax, upkeep, etc...) that right there is not easy to do. Then you need to deal with people, some are great and you never hear from them, some call often for minor fixes. Then you can get the ones that are late or the ones that like to stay for 1 year and then move out.... which you then might have it vacant for a month or two, which is a killer on your ROI. Then you may get the people who trash your place and you have to go behind them and do a bunch of repairs.... people who don't do it don't know all that is involved and people who do have rentals either deal with the crap or are lucky and haven't had those type of tenants yet. You have to factor your "time" into the investment as well.

if you go with real-estate (in the US) prop tax sales are by far the best investment and I have looked at REO's, foreclosures, flipping houses, rentals, building new houses, etc... a lot of those are hard to find good deals in the first place, you can have unforseens (like a huge repair you find out a year after you buy or the tenant that doesn't pay for couple months, or it sits vacant for longer than expected) or you build a bunch of new houses and the market crashes before you are finished building them (<- been there) but with prop tax sales your time and risk is almost nothing, the reward is very high.