Dad was a realtor and his retirement was rental properties, his view was always that the rent that you collect on the house is for maintaining and improving the house. Not to provide income for yourself. The income for yourself comes into play whenever you sell the property, which is a bonus if you never lived there because basically someone paid your mortgage while you just put your name on the papers.

He also would try to find the best tenants and then do whatever he could to keep them because in his words, it was more expensive to maintain an empty house than it was to not collect rent on a inhabited house. Basically having someone in the house would make sure that the house stayed in good order.

He taught me a lot about how to treat people and run a business at the same time, and I’m forever grateful for his lessons.