Being a landlord is a job, not an investment, unless you’d plan on being a slumlord. Costs are unpredictable, and you’d need to learn about your legal obligations to your tenants to ensure that you didn’t open yourself up to a lawsuit.

If you own a property to rent you have to maintain it. If you get enjoyment or satisfaction from taking care of property then go ahead.

If you’d rather be fishing or something instead then invest. If you’re unsure invest, because it’s easier to sell investments and buy a rental than the other way around if you change your mind

He can always move in if he wants

Never really got this part - you don’t just move in if you want, you have to unhouse a family first.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve been on the wrong side of that…

If you want a quiet life, don’t become a landlord. You can anyway invest in real estate through listed financial instruments

In my area people are selling off their rental properties these days, as the return isn’t worth it any more. I’m sure there are markets where you can still earn a lot that way, but if you’re not interested in being a landlord, don’t become one. If you want a quiet life, keep investing in a diversified portfolio. It’s ok to have other values and goals.

I’ll share my personal experience.

I have an apartment rented for over 10 years, which I’m renting at way below “market price”, whatever that may mean. In the area, the rent for a single bedroom apartment is in the €1200/€1600 range; I’m renting a three bedroom for roughly ¼ of that and I do not intend to hike it. I kept the rent frozen for nearly 10 years, during a period when my country was in the shit after the 2008 market crash. I started raising the rent some five years ago, roughly 2% every year, by the national rent actualization index published by the government, which is calculated taking into consideration the year’s inflation rate. Fuck scalpers.

Parallel to that, I managed to put and still put some every month towards an investment fund and a special saivings product my country has, where a percentage of what you put aside is deductibke towards your income return; these products, upon maturity, are more fiscally advantageous than investing in stocks or ETFs. Regardless, I also keep an ETF on a broker but haven’t had the capital to reinforce for some time now.

I’ve invested in both. Don’t expect rent to be a good income, but if the housing market is on the way up it might be a good asset.

We bought the house for living in, but moved cities after a few years. The market value has doubled in the last ten years for our house. Being a landlord sucks, but it’s borrowed money that doubled its value while tenants cover the mortgage. That down payment would’ve turned into ~10x if we sold the house today. Still, it’s hard to find and predict a market like that just for investing.

Be prepared to lawyer up when that rent doesn’t get paid. Have enough saved up to repair/replace that boiler when it fails. I spent my two-week Christmas holiday painting walls and repairing/replacing all the things last year. I’d rather have things fixed as they break, but this tenant decided to save everything for handover day.

For ETFs I spread my funds over a dozen high-risk ones, I guess they perform on average some 15% YOY. If I math that right it’s a 3.5x increase over the same ten years. I’d still consider it to be less risky.

ETFs by a mile, like I see others said, being a good landlord means it being a whole job.

Way easier to just plop some money across some ETF diversification.

Only thing I’d say is I’d assume landlording is more a “you get what you put in” kind or situation where you can work harder to do better, etfs/investing is much less in your control.

…you do know that if you’re a landlord you’re gonna have to deal with tenants who don’t wanna pay right? Do you really wanna deal with that stress? God help you if your tenants just choose to abandon the property.

Depends a lot on where you live. We tried renting out our home after we emigrated. We missed the boat on the commodification of house prices in our previous country. They’re still rising, but nothing like the amount the previous generation experienced. The primary limiting forces are loan interest rates (lower rates = higher house prices) and average salaries (rents usually reflect how much can be scalped from people in a given area while leaving them just enough for food). Unless that country does something dystopian, like introduce multi a generational mortgages (like Japan has), prices have more or less stagnated. Wages certainly don’t seem to be going up.

The money you make on the house will also depend upon your own income, i.e. what tax rate you will be on for your rental income. You may not be taking home that much of your rent. The good old days (where you could dump all the rent into a mortgage and claim zero income) are long gone for a lot of countries. This might not be the case if you run all this as a company, but I decided against that, because getting money out was arse.

I currently have a few ETFs, but what you might want to consider is the ETFs your pension is invested into (if you have a defined contribution / 401k style pension). Mine are currently all invested in European ETFs in the vain hope that it may mitigate some of the losses when the AI bubble crashes, and takes the US stock market with it. Your pension will be pre-tax income, so it’s a much more efficient way to save. Some countries will allow you to take out a lump sum before you retire, so this isn’t necessarily just playing the long game.

Anyhow… it all really depends on where you live & your personal circumstances.

Generally said, it is a lifestyle decision. One is not necessarily better than the other.

Depends on your life and what works for you. I invest in shares, and as long as the ETFs you invest in are climbers, then go for it.

Shares over property is attractive for me because if i ever need money in an emergency i can simply sell however many i want/need to and have the money quickly.

With a property id have to sell the whole thing and thats a nightmare in itself that takes ages - not good if i need emergency cash quickly.

Plus i dont need to maintain my shares or do anything but check em (dont have to worry about tenants, property value, maintainence etc). Way more hands off, and if you have a good hunch and research well, you can grow it way better than a property.