It's hard to get a good return on your investment in residential real estate without using leverage.

For instance: You don't buy one place outright. You buy 5 with 20% down. You may not have positive cash flow, but at long as it isn't negative not only do you get all the increase in value, you also get more equity every month as the tenants pay your mortgages.

If you bought it outright and over some period of time the tenants have paid your entire investment and the price of the property doubles, you doubled your money. If you buy 5 and over some period of time the tenants pay your mortgage and initial investment and the properties have doubled in value you have increased your initial investment 10X. And before the big expensive renovations come in, you can sell and buy something else if you're not equipped to deal with that.

Also if you are just breaking even to get free property but you want to start getting passive income, after a few years you can refi to a longer term and lower your mortgage payments to get in the black every month.

This isn't advice, fuck anybody buying up single family homes to rent, just showing one way they can generate both wealth and passive income for nothing. Literally nothing if they're using a property management company.

Fuck anybody buying up single family homes to rent. I know I already said that, but it bears repeating.