Daniel Tyasmoko:

I've been a landlord for over 25 years now, and I can assure you that there is as much to learn doing this kind of work for a living as there is doing any other kind of work for a living.

Buying a house merely as an investment is a risky proposition in my view. If you rent that house to a tenant, and a few weeks later he starts to complain that it's infested with bed bugs or cockroaches, not only is it your responsibility to hire an exterminator to eliminate the problem, but you cannot hold the tenant responsible for bringing them in if he simply claims that they were there to begin with. How can you prove him wrong?

Another issue is deciding who to rent to, and that means being able to tell a good tenant from a bad one. I find that at least 20 percent of the applications for rent that I get are bogus. People will give me the name and phone number of a friend, and claim that he's their landlord. I simply go down to the property tax department here in Winnipeg and find out who the property tax bill is sent to every year, and that way I know the name, address and phone number of the real landlord. And, when I talk to that landlord, if he's never heard of the applicant wanting to rent from me, then the application goes in the trash because I can't believe anything on it.

And, of course, as a landlord, you pretty well have to do all the cleaning, repairs and renovations yourself. That's not because you can't hire someone to do that work, it's because the work they do isn't on par with what a landlord would do if cleaning, repairing or renovating his/her own property. And, I can give you some examples:

I once had a tenant hire a cleaning company to clean up his suite in the days immediately prior to his vacating. Two immigrant women showed up with rags and sponges and started cleaning the kitchen cupboards. They couldn't get the marks off the shelves that were made by the metal cans stored in that cupboard, so they just gave up and said the marks were permanent and the shelves would have to be painted over. You can't get those marks off with a sponge or a rag, you have to use a Magic Eraser or a Scotchbrite pad. I gave them each a Magic Eraser and they claimed that they knew what they were doing, the Magic Eraser wouldn't work any better than a rag, and basically said they were done with the cupboards.

They did the same thing trying to clean the soap scum off the bathtub and shower tiling with rags. Soap scum is soap that's lost it's solubility in water. So, using a wet rag to remove soap scum is an exercise in futility.

Long story short, I let them do their thing, then took pictures, then filed a claim against the tenant for the cleaning I had to do after these women were done. And the claim succeeded.

Here's another one: I replaced all the square edge kitchen counter tops in my building with prefab plastic laminate counter tops. BUT, when I cut a hole in the prefab top for a sink or for the kitchen deck faucet, I paint the exposed particle board with an oil based paint both inside the hole and on the underside of the top around that hole. That way, if water ever leaks into that area, the paint will prevent the particle board from absorbing any moisture until the leak is discovered and fixed. You can do the same thing with an epoxy meant to be used to restore the strength of rotted wood.

NO counter top company will do that, and it's because 99% of customers judge the quality of the work done by what it looks like, not what's been done to ensure the work lasts a long time. So, as long as the customer can't see that something's been done to extend the expected lifespan of the work, no company will bother doing it. They're only concerned about getting paid and the work lasting one year until their warranty expires. Whatever happens after that is the customer's problem, not theirs.

And, it's the same story even if you buy a building big enough to have it's own maintenance staff. The people working for you are only going to do the bare minimum to ensure they don't get fired. They're not going to do as good a job as the landlord would.

Here's a tip for any renters in here wanting to rent in a well maintained apartment block:
Look for a building with flowers growing in the planter at the front of the building. That's cuz no caretaker is going to create extra work for himself by planting flowers. Those flowers are almost certainly planted by the landlord's wife, girl friend or perhaps mother, and that usually means that the landlord lives in the building, and that usually means that the landlord maintains his own property, and that usually means that everything in the apartment will be in good working condition.

Looking after a rental property is NOT AT ALL "easy money".