Spoken like somebody who has never rented out property, risked $$$$ on building something, or doing anything with a business. Please read up on how real estate businesses work.
It's really hard to be sympathetic considering how rent and housing prices have exploded over the last 20 years and how difficult that's made life and future prospects for the average person.
I would say the rewards extremely outweigh the risk.
That is a policy problem: we make it hard to build housing in the areas of high demand. There is nothing inherent in landlording that says a power differential needs to exist. The low-demand areas, renters have way more power.
Only risk really, if you're getting mortgage to get apartment to rent is that prices go up but you can then just increase the rent. Aside from "tenant completely trashed my house", the risks are nonexistent, it's one of safest ways to invest your money.
Tenants trash the place or don't pay IS a real risk. I have family who just lost 300k in damages and unpaid rent with bad tenants.
Similarly, value decline is another real risk. I have lost 200k in value on home I live in. If I needed to sell, I would be SOL, which is a low occurrence but serious risk.
Are you a landlord? If not, why not, if you are convinced the risks are nonexistent and it's one of safest ways to invest your money?
Reality is that while risk is moderately low (but far from nonexistent), returns are also very low, so being a landlord isn't a particularly good investment. You're much better off in the stock market, at least up to the point where you have so much money that you start needing to diversify.
